Mac .DAT Files

Hi

I have hundreds of files with .dat extensions in my photo directory, they drive me up the wall when I am looking for files, there are so many.

What are they, can they be deleted or hidden

Cache0000036385.dat these are like 5mb big each, loads of them

Thanks

You moved the picture folder from your old windows machine?

bobtomay said:

You moved the picture folder from your old windows machine?

Click to expand...

Possible, I am not totally sure they may have been taken from a back up drive on the network, but I am sure when I load new images off my CF Card new .dat files appear in the directory.

in fact looking at the date these files are not even 2 weeks old, maybe they delete are a certain time as all are pretty much same time date, with in a few minutes that would tie up with downloading like 100 Raw images of a CF card or so.

Certainly related to images being moved on that day. just odd they sit in the root directory of the photo directory that the sub directories that have been edited.

thanks for reply

Main thing is to find out where they're coming from.

dat files are typically created by Windows (and some software). Your camera could be creating them. Are you shooting in RAW only or RAW plus jpg. Try changing the extension of one of them to .jpg and see if it will open.

How are you importing from the CF card? Try importing one pic into a new empty location to verify it's coming from the card.

My guess is that you can delete them without any ramifications, but I wouldn't until you know where they're coming from and then don't empty the trash until you verify that everything still works after deleting them.

Thanks again, I would like them not to appear in the first place.