# Issue with deleting permanently deleting files



## free2australian (Dec 20, 2014)

Recently I uploaded from my memory card a batch of  raw photos.  This batch for some reason will not permanently delete files in the usual manner.

Not sure what I have done when importing the files.  see the attached screen shot.

Be grateful for advice how to rectify this and some recommendation for this not to re-occur in my next upload for photos


thank you


sue


----------



## Tony Jay (Dec 20, 2014)

Hi Sue.

What the dialog box is telling you is exactly what is described.
The files can still be deleted but deleted files cannot be transferred to the Trash and so once deleted are gone forever.
The usual situation is that the drive on which the files are located is not formatted as a Mac OS extended format.
This happens with my external hard drives that are actually NTFS-formatted because they need to be read between Mac and Windows systems and I have a utility that allows an NTFS-formatted drive to be read from and written to on my MBP.

Tony Jay


----------



## free2australian (Dec 22, 2014)

Thanks for your response.  How come in all the years that I have been using Lightroom and deleting photos from disk not just Lightroom I never received a message as indicated in the screen shot as attached.  That is it moved to the trash as requested and  the disk?


----------



## Tony Jay (Dec 22, 2014)

There may have been inadvertent changes to either the permissions of the files in question or the drives.

Tony Jay


----------



## kbfoot (Dec 24, 2014)

Mine has always done this but, strangely, every once in a while it deletes to the trash without this dialog.  Same HDD always!  I'll have to check how the HDDs have been formatted.


----------



## free2australian (Dec 24, 2014)

Is there method I can use to change the permissions to original way I had it?

Sue


----------



## free2australian (Jan 5, 2015)

How do I change the permissions so that I do not receive a message " Unable to remove to trash"?

thank you

Sue


----------



## Victoria Bampton (Jan 6, 2015)

Where are the photos stored Sue?  Internal drive?  External drive?  Network storage?


----------



## free2australian (Jan 11, 2015)

I have an external hard drive which I copies are sent to once they are imported into Lightroom.  Original photos imported are in the Pictures folder.


----------



## Victoria Bampton (Jan 11, 2015)

Just try creating a blank text file or empty folder on the boot drive, and send it to the trash.  It's an odd one, but that sometimes fixes it.


----------



## sizzlingbadger (Jan 11, 2015)

I see this problem too on my Mac, it seems to appear randomly over the past few years and only with Lightroom. I just live with it now.


----------



## free2australian (Jan 12, 2015)

Thank you


----------

