Small copies of files, starting with a .

[RuthyN]

I have a Macbook Air. I take photos, put them on the Mac while on holiday, then transfer them via a flash-drive to my pc later.
On the pc I always see there are small duplicate files with the same name as the images but starting with a dot ( . ) They won't open. Can I safely delete these off the pc without damaging the proper file. Sometimes they are RAW files, so there is a side-car xmp file. These are also duplicated, with a dot prefix. all these .---- files are only 4-6kb each. Thanks for your help.

 

[cradom]

They should be files starting with a ._
These are resource forks for the images and can be deleted. Only Macs can use these forks.
They are left over from the OS9 and earlier days.

 

[RuthyN]

Thanks cradom. So it is safe to delete them. Good, that answers my question. Never heard of 'forks', what do you mean?

 

[cradom]

Everything you never wanted to know about resource forks: Resource fork - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia