Why do these faded files appear on my flash drive when I remove it from MacBook?

Asked by DarknessWithin (987

) February 3rd, 2013

http://i45.tinypic.com/34yphcn.jpg
http://i45.tinypic.com/2nv8ad1.jpg
Lately I have been using my mom’s Macbook Air because it’s faster and plays videos 100x better than my Acer. I have begun to notice that when I use my flash drive in the macbook and then plug it into my Acer I get the faded out folders/files you see in the screenies above. In the case of the second screenie, there are also second, properly saved versions of those files where they alphabetically belong.

I have tried to delete these things, but they always reappear after it’s been connected to the Macbook again. As the folders delete it always says ‘deleting 90 items’. WTF?

What is going on?

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4 Answers

Check trash on the macbook and see if they’re there. If so, delete them.

Pachy (18610

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A computer guru friend of mine says:

OS X makes hidden files that are prefaced with a period to denote a hidden file. These are for things like spotlight indexing, how you sort a folder (icon vs. column or list) and you can even set an image that is the background in the folder. Windows will display these hidden files. It is safe to ignore them. And yes, OS X will recreate them each time you plug the drive in.
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Hope that helps!

augustlan (47745

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@Pachyderm_In_The_Room My apologizes I should have clarified that I deleted them on the Acer.

@augustlan It doesn’t take up room on the drive does it? Thank you though this does help.

DarknessWithin (987

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I actually don’t know the answer, @DarknessWithin, but when I talk to my computer guru guy again, I’ll try to remember to ask him.

augustlan (47745

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