Forums | MacLife

Yes, the files that start with "._" are the resource forks for the respective files with the same name after the "._".  Mac OS X does this on file systems that don't directly support resource forks (thumb drives are FAT formatted).

In other words, your file "._DSC00287" is the resource fork for the file "DSC00287".

As long as you are sure you don't need these "resource" files, you can get rid of them with a couple of commands in the Terminal.

First, a couple of notes.  Some "Mac" files (like applications, etc.) will break if you delete their resource fork.  For graphics files, the resource fork isn't required to make it work; it likely contains the preview image, etc.

Go ahead and start up Terminal.  In the window that shows up, type "cd " (that's a space after the cd), without typing the quotes.  Don't press Return yet!  Now, drag the mounted thumb drive to the Terminal window until the window border highlights, and release.  This enters the path to your drive at the current cursor position.  Now press <Return>.

In the example below, the drive I'm going to examine is named "THUMBELLINA", but yours will likely be different.  After the "cd", copy the line that begins with "find" exactly.  This first line will just print all of the matching files.

If you see something you aren't sure of, STOP!  Also make sure that you are looking at your thumb drive, not your hard drive.

cd /Volumes/THUMBELLINA
find . -regex ".*/\._..*" -type f -exec ls -l {} \;

Now, as long as you don't see any files printed that you think you might want to keep, copy and paste the following line exactly, which will delete those same files (and print them again, for reference).

find . -regex ".*/\._..*" -type f -exec ls -l {} \; -exec rm -f {} \;

Here's a real-life example of what was printed when I ran this:

[Odin:/Volumes/THUMBELLINA] kosh% find . -regex ".*/\._..*" -type f -exec ls {} \;
-rwxrwxrwx  1 kosh  wheel  82 Nov 29  2003 ./.Trashes/._502
-rwxrwxrwx  1 kosh  wheel  82 Apr 19  2004 ./._eBay Ryobi Rout auction.html

The file names are off to the right.  the rest of the info tells you when it was last modified, who owns it, etc.

Thanks for all the help. I'll probably need the weekend before I get a chance to mess with it again.
Wish me luck.


bmickey9