Empty directory not getting deleted in external harddisk

[Bruce Pieterse]

> So it seems like your USB disk is /dev/sdb1. So in this case, Bruce
> Pieterse suggested that you should run the following in a terminal:
>
> fsck -y /dev/sdb1

/ It is important to unmount the device before attempting any of the 
operations below, except in the case of the windows option /
Unfortunately, this will not work in this case as the filesystem type 
is NTFS (Windows) and not EXT2/3/4 (Linux). You can either run ntfsfix 
-n /dev/sdb1 to check and see if it detects errors (if you want to 
attempt to try and fix the errors simply drop the -n switch. *According 
to the man pages there are known problems with ntfsfix, so please make 
a backup of your data before hand*) or you can use the disk utility in 
ubuntu to check for errors (I think it might use the same command 
above, but i'm not sure) otherwise your best bet would be to plug it in 
a Windows machine and do error-checking from the properties dialog of 
the drive.

Is there any particular reason why you using an NTFS partition instead 
of an EXT3/4 partition? Perhaps you could split the drive into two and 
make the partition FAT32 instead for compatibility between the various 
operating systems. Just a suggestion :)

-- 
Best of luck,

Bruce