Why does my finder have so many useless files?

When I open up finder and go to All Images, All Movies, or All Documents, why is there a bunch of crap in there? Everything from old files, email attachment images, email signature images, random photoshop and illustrator files and tutorials, etc. I have no idea how they all ended up on my late 2009 model Macbook Pro. I've had it for about 7 months and I still can't figure out why this is happening. To this point I've just ignored it since I've only used up 30GB of my 250GB hardrive.

One theory that I have is that it seems like whenever I plug in my USB key, everything automatically gets copied and put into these enclosing folders.

I guess it can be a quite useful feature when looking for a file that you've thought of no where to be found or lost your USB key. Kind of like an auto backup feature (keeping in mind that I'm not using time machine).

Can someone please help me figure this out or know the cause of this? Does Snow Leopard OSX 10.6.2 do this automatically as a backup feature or am I just going nuts?

You're looking at the Search presets in the Sidebar, aren't you? Those aren't real folders. By selecting one of those, you're having Finder do a search for all files of that type. If you want to find your files you should go to your home folder and look in the Documents, Pictures, Movies, Music, and other real folders in there.

Jamie-Jamie said:

You're looking at the Search presets in the Sidebar, aren't you? Those aren't real folders. By selecting one of those, you're having Finder do a search for all files of that type. If you want to find your files you should go to your home folder and look in the Documents, Pictures, Movies, Music, and other real folders in there.

Click to expand...

So basically its just a virtual database that contains all of the same file types?

I still don't understand why my hard-drive has so many files that couldn't have gotten onto it any other way then via USB key. Why am I able to see such files in the search presets even when the USB key is not inserted?

If the smart folders on the Finder side bar for all images, documents etc are not of any use to you you can turn them off.
Finder > Preferences (Under finder on the menu bar) > Sidebar, deselect the ones you don't want.
All the items in my smart folders are on my HD so not sure why you are seeing items that are not.

I'm not convinced that they're not all on your internal drive.

Have you done a right click - Get Info on those files to determine the path?

Or just highlight them and look at the location at the bottom of the Finder window?


I believe you are just seeing things that you're not use to seeing on a Windows system. Ex. The search folder for 'All Images' will return "all images" on your machine including those in your user Library, internet, email, etc. folders that would not necessarily have shown up in a typical Windows search. It'll return icons and graphics for any application that has images in it, etc.

DannyV said:

Everything from old files, email attachment images, email signature images, random photoshop and illustrator files and tutorials, etc. I have no idea how they all ended up on my late 2009 model Macbook Pro.

...

One theory that I have is that it seems like whenever I plug in my USB key, everything automatically gets copied and put into these enclosing folders.

Click to expand...

IIRC the info in the All Images/All Movies/All Documents is controlled by Spotlight. If you plugged in your flash drive Spotlight might have indexed it without you noticing it, causing those files to show up in your "search" results.

Same issues

I have lots of different files/folders listed in my Finder on my HD that mean nothing to me and are taking up a lot of space. They are also that faded out shade. I dont want to mess with them as I presume they are doing a job for the mac or are they just useless files created over time? Ive had the same macbook for 6 years now with only 1 major software update.

Anyone point in the right direction?

Thanks
Kelly

Can you give us examples of some of the names for these files and folders? I wonder i the Mac is not showing files that are normally invisible.

var
dev
.fseventsd
usr
sbin
.hotflies
.btree

These are just a few. But these files are everywhere and are taking up LOADS of space!

If you are seeing all of those in finder you have enabled Hidden Files. Those are part of OSX (Unix system) and most of those are normally hidden. If you can delete any of them you will have no OS to boot to.

Why does Windows have all those files like System32, SAM files? Zap those and see how Windows works after that!

I am on my way out the door but someone else here can tell you how to hide those like they are supposed to be. DO NOT DELETE them. If you do you will own a Door Stop!

As dtravis7 has noted, don't delete those folders. The only folders 99% of Mac users should manipulate directly are located in the user directory and those, as you know, are not there. Leave them be.

Miles 0110 mentioned that Spotlight may have indexed a USB drive & those files are appearing in the sidebar "All Documents" list. I am by no means an expert on OS X, more of a 'duh, huh, what?' kind of user- But here's what I see on the subject:

On my Mac (using OS X 10.6.8) Spotlight does, indeed, re-index when a USB key or my firewire external hard drive is plugged in.

Without the external plugged in:
If you click on one of the files you think may be only on the USB key, the path at the bottom should refer you to the not present external device & not the local drive. At least that's how it goes on mine. You will see duplicates galore if your external is used for backup. If you ask Spotlight to re-index without the external attached, these disappear until the next plug in of the external. Then, the re-index starts over. (A long proces on my computer.)

I never found Spotlight to be very accurate- My ma4 files never show up in "Music", but in "All Documents". Likewise, "All Images" brings up a bunch of pdf & a few docx files. I prefer to use a program called Easy Find which seems more accurate.

Again, I don't know much about OS X, but that's what I've observed.(Actually, in about a minute I'm going to post a question about Spotlight.) I hope it helps you figure out what's going on.

Now, if I could only get Spotlight NOT to re-index every time I plug in the external. What a CPU hog!
Enjoy Today!
Paul