Mac Forums - View Single Post - External USB drives trashed with Spotlight

Dysfunction · Dysfunction #2 (**permalink**)

12-03-2011, 07:06 AM

Let's cover a few basics.

Your drive is still FAT32. This is a file system, which is completely separate from any directory structure.

The .Trashes, ._.Trashes, .Spotlight-v100 etc are the same as the Recycle.Bin and desktop.ini respectively. That is to say that deleted files are stored in the Trashes, until emptied (just like the recycle bin) and the spotlight files are used for search metadata. You can safely delete those without concern (please check to ensure no files in the trash directories are essential before doing so).

Now, on to the real question..

since none of that should have caused a dataloss, or corruption (really, I connect drives between a windows box and mac all the time, it's no big deal). What's actually happening?

Dysfunction #2 (permalink)
Member Since: Mar 17, 2008 Location: Tucson, AZ Posts: 6,588 Mac Specs: 2008 and 2011 15" mbps, late 11 iMac, iPhone 4s, and too many ipods and other stuff	12-03-2011, 07:06 AM Let's cover a few basics. Your drive is still FAT32. This is a file system, which is completely separate from any directory structure. The .Trashes, ._.Trashes, .Spotlight-v100 etc are the same as the Recycle.Bin and desktop.ini respectively. That is to say that deleted files are stored in the Trashes, until emptied (just like the recycle bin) and the spotlight files are used for search metadata. You can safely delete those without concern (please check to ensure no files in the trash directories are essential before doing so). Now, on to the real question.. since none of that should have caused a dataloss, or corruption (really, I connect drives between a windows box and mac all the time, it's no big deal). What's actually happening? mike This machine kills fascists Got # ? phear the command line! Last edited by Dysfunction; 12-03-2011 at 07:15 AM.
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