Can't delete folder from external harddrive

This is driving me nuts. This one external hard drive simply does not "allow" me to delete folders. Now there is no error message. I click on the folder I want to delete and get the normal "delete dialog" about "recycling" files. Then the dialog closes but the folder and all files remain on the drive like nothing happened.

I've reconnected the drive multiple times and restarted my pc. Doesn't change anything. I'm also logged in as admin.

I had the same issue on same drive with another folder. I don't know how but at some point the folder got removed from it (not visible anymore) but no disk space was freed. Now whenever I connect this drive this "deleted" folder appears in the Trash bin. However it's not actually possible to remove it from there when the drive is connected. Same behavior. It appears to get deleted but remains in the trash. I can disconnect, delete trash and it's gone. But when I reconnect the drive it appears again.

Not sure what is going on here. Any ideas?
winver: 2004

Please type below command into Command Prompt and press Enter key.

Following command will fix errors on the disk and locates bad sectors and recovers readable information.

Code:

Chkdsk X: /r

Replace X: drive letter with drive letter you want to check for errors.

Try using the batch script under option 7 in the following tutorial:

Delete Folder in Windows 10

FreeBooter said:

Please type below command into Command Prompt and press Enter key.

Following command will fix errors on the disk and locates bad sectors and recovers readable information.

Code:

Chkdsk X: /r

Replace X: drive letter with drive letter you want to check for errors.

OK, upon connection it already asked for scanning and repair and said it was repaired successfully (rather quickly), But now running your command. ETA says over 16 hrs (it's 4TB and almost full)

dalchina said:

@Matthew Wai - does that provide the option to schedule deletion on restart - to avoid any and all contention - (which the utility I cited does)?

The batch script does not provide such an option. The script uses RoboCopy, which does not require a restart. For detail, see this post: Delete Folder in Windows 10

checkdisk finished and no problems found.

I also ran Matthew Wai batch file (Run as administrator) but it simply fails with below error message:

The operation has failed.
Press a key to close this window.

Any additional ideas?

EDIT:

Correction. Most of the folder content was actually removed but a file in a sub sub folder somehow can't be deleted which probably lead to the error.

beginner99 said:

Correction. Most of the folder content was actually removed but a file in a sub sub folder somehow can't be deleted which probably lead to the error.

Try using the batch file to delete the "sub sub folder".