External hard drive shows partly full although there are no files on it

external hard drive

I want to reformat an external hard drive and for this purpose I saved all files I had on it onto my internal hard drive.

But although I deleted all files from the hard drive, in the explorer it still shows around 17gb of the ~100gb drive are full. I have activated showing hidden folders, but it's still empty.

Now this doesn't stop me from formatting the drive, but I don't want to accidentally delete something that I just don't see.

Why is the drive not empty and is this normal? Can I safely format it?

enter image description here

enter image description here

enter image description here

Best Answer

You've selected Show hidden files, folders, and drives, but be sure to also deselect Hide protected operating system files (in Folder Options > View). Otherwise, you're getting an incomplete view.

(Cf. How to delete $RECYCLE.BIN folder on external hard disk?)

enter image description here

Related Question