Many people delete files by reformatting the drive or moving them to the Recycle Bin. Delete the files from the external hard drive permanently Under the “View” tab, select “Show hidden files, folders, and drives”.Ģ. ✍ Note: If your system is Windows 7, click the 'Organize' button on the Windows Explorer. Then you can see if there are unnecessary files you can delete. On the top of the window, choose the “View” tab, and check the box in front of “ Show hidden files, folders and drives”.

Double-click the “This PC” to open File Explorer. You can unhide those files and see if there are some of them unimportant you can delete. Windows make some files invisible to prevent deleting. If your external hard drive is full, but some storage space missing, it is probably because of the hidden files. Those files in the Recycle Bin still occupy space if you don’t delete them. Before you try the following ways, you could empty your Recycle Bin. There are 3 things you can do when your external hard drive is full. What can we do when an external hard drive is full? What to do when external hard drive is full? But in a long time, the external hard drive could be out of space, or full for no reason. Thus, lots of people take an external hard drive as a backup drive to keep files like music, videos, pictures in case the original files are accidentally deleted or modified. And wherever you go, you can connect it with any PC to carry or to share quantities of data. An external hard drive is usually an HDD or SSD that can provide you a large amount of storage space.

Full format external hard drive windows