you could add a leading dot, but then windows won't recognize them and will recreate new ones if you connect that drive to a windows pc again.
do you often switch back and forth between mac and windows with this external?
your best bet is just to delete them as you see them.
you're also likely to see the hidden OS X files on the windows machine, such as ".DS_Store", these can also be deleted.
is this drive formatted NTFS? if so it is probably only readable, not writable from OS X. If this is the case you will need to copy everything on it somewhere you can retrieve it later and reformat the drive anything other than NTFS. If you are ever going to use it on a windows machine again i would recomend FAT32.
Error code 61 is -61 Write permissions error; Not a publisher.
see this site for what error codes mean.
DO NOT format that drive in FAT32! Unless you want a lot of headaches. You are better off getting drivers to enable OS X to have write access to NTFS volumes. Here's a link to an old post of mine with more links to why not to use FAT32.
Of course, if you are never going to use that drive with Windows again, then you are best off backing up your data and reformatting it in HFS+.
Which drivers and where can I get them?
Referenced in the aforementioned link.
Great fix -- thank you -- except why won't Spotlight search the external drive?
You can change this though. Instructions here:
Using Spotlight to index external volumes | Veerle's blog
Ok, so I type 'mdutil -i on /Volumes/Local Disk' in Terminal and it says it's an invalid path.
I assume you have the external drive plugged in? If so, and if the drive icon is on the desktop, you should be able to click once on the icon (to make it "active"), then left click on the name to make it editable.So then I try to rename my external and the spot to rename it (in Right Click > Get Info) is greyed out, i.e., locked.
Is the disk actually named "Local Disk"? And isn't that your internal drive? I thought you wanted to enable Spotlight indexing on the external.
Also... the instructions say you must be logged in as root. Were you? If you weren't, and don't know how to, then chances are you shouldn't. Logging in as root leaves the system very vulnerable to serious mistakes that can hose everything up good. You really should know exactly what you are doing if you log in as root.
I assume you have the external drive plugged in? If so, and if the drive icon is on the desktop, you should be able to click once on the icon (to make it "active"), then left click on the name to make it editable.
If that doesn't work, then in the Get Info box, click on the lock icon at the bottom to unlock the properties. You probably will have to authorize it with an admin name/password.
By root, I thought you meant the primary login account?
There seems to be no possible way to rename the external known as Local Disk. Please check out the screen shot below: