Can't empty Trash folder when "My Passport drive is plugged in.

[Kenney]

I deleted some of my old backups in Time Machine on my "My Passport" drive. now when I connect the drive to my Mac I see these files in the Trash folder. I try to delete them but I keep getting the Message "The operation can’t be completed because the item “share” is in use." If I continue I get the Message "The operation can’t be completed because the item “usr” is in use. and then Continue "The operation can’t be completed because the item “Macintosh HD” is in use. Then it goes to the next file and starts the error messages over again.
If I look at the drive in Finder I don't see these files/directories.
In Time Machine I can see newer backup directories/files.

KenK

 

[Slydude]

I can't think of an easy fix for this other than to format the Time Machine drive and start over with new backups. I think that by deleting files from the backups yourself has destroyed the structure of the backups. Somewhere among the files in the trash there is probably an original / unmodified file that has numerous links to it in subsequent backups. In other words Time Machine sees these files as being in use because they are part of the structure of the current backup.

This is why every bit of Time Machine documentation I've seen comes to the same conclusion: Let Time Machine handle deletion of the files. This will happen automatically as space is needed.