Problem deleting files

I recently had a power outage in my area in the middle of writing something to an external hard drive (250 GB Western Digital "MyBook", drive F). When I rebooted, everything was still in tact on the drive. I can read files, write and overwrite files, and move files to and from the drive. However, I cannot delete files directly from the drive. I get an error message saying:

"Cannot delete (file): Cannot find the specified path.

Make sure you specify the correct path."

As I thought about it more, it only made sense that it was a problem with the recycling volume if everything else was working fine. I just now tried setting up individual Recycle Bin policies for each of my drives. I set up the external drive not to use it at all; files are immediately removed. I tried to delete a file, and sure enough, it worked.

I am wondering exactly what the problem is at this point, but what I am wondering even more is how to fix it. I did a checkdisk and it said no errors were found, so I am very confused on what I can possibly do to restore Recycle Bin capabilities. I would really appreciate any help.

If it's an external, maybe you can just do a full format on it?

Unfortunately, this drive is larger than my actual hard drive. I am currently using 120 GB of it. My C drive is only 150 GB, and has 37 GB remaining. It is possible, though, that I can borrow a friend's drive to house my data on temporarily. I will ask him for that favor if you really think a full format will work.

Well, if the drive itself is fine (aka, given a clean bill of health by chkdsk - I doubt you can run a USB external through the more rigorous SpinRite 6) then fully reformatting would do wonders. I must say it's a bit drastic, but meh, it's better than trying to go on with a faulty Recycle Bin.

Agreed. I do not like the thought of accidentally deleting a lossless CD at the moment. Thank you for your help. I will reformat the drive. Besides, I have wanted NTFS on this drive for quite some time now.