# Usb stick shows space, but Mac says its full???



## positivenote (Nov 5, 2007)

Hi guys,
Please help asap .... i am working on a project that needs saving to my usb stick. I have a spare 29mb on it but when i try and save to it my g4 is telling me that there is no space? I think it might have a trash folder hidden somewhere on the stick as i've encountered this before on a PC, but i dont know what or how to solve the prob on my mac...
any help would be great
thanks


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## nixgeek (Nov 5, 2007)

How is this USB stick formatted?  Is it formatted FAT or NTFS?  If it's the latter, then that would probably be the problem since Mac OS X (up to 10.4.10 as far as I know, not sure about Leopard) cannot write to NTFS partitions out-of-the-box.  Same goes for any other non-MS operating system.

There is a project called MacFUSE that will allow you to read and write to proprietary filesystems like NTFS.  This might help.

http://code.google.com/p/macfuse/


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## positivenote (Nov 5, 2007)

Hi, the stick is formatted FAT. I have had this problem before and as far as i can remember it was a case of the hidden files taking up the space in the trash on the stick. However, i cant find the trash folder when i open it and i think that it may be 'hidden'. Any other sugestions?
Thanks so far


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## MisterMe (Nov 5, 2007)

positivenote said:


> ... However, i cant find the trash folder when i open it and i think that it may be 'hidden'. Any other sugestions?
> Thanks so far


If you have files in the Trash, then you can find them by opening the Trash and looking at them. However, you can save time by just emptying the Trash and getting on with your work.


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## nixgeek (Nov 5, 2007)

Also, PLEASE make sure that you PROPERLY unmount your USB drive.  On Windows, it's the little icon on the System Tray that allows you to "Safely Remove Devices".  On the Mac, just drag the USB drive to the Trash and the Trash icon changes to an Eject icon.  This will perform any final writes to the drive before unmounting it.  Disconnecting before properly mounting your USB drive can corrupt the data and possibly damage your USB drive.


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