What are these?

[Albert Reeder]

Hi All,

When I copy a photo over to my C drive and bring up the folder in Windows XP; there are two copies of that photo. One is the regular thumbnail and the other one show like this: ._name.jpg. When I click on this file - nothing happens. What is this file for and how do you use it? Can it be safely deleted?
Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Al

 

[eric]

any file with a leading dot character is a mac hidden system file. some are ok to delete, some are not.

is this C drive a partition on a mac running bootcamp, or a totally separate computer? actually, either way, it should be ok to remove. once you were to recopy the image or any media file really, back to your mac, the mac will recreate the hidden file as needed. i see this all the time with my externals that bounce between my mac and my work pc. i remove the hidden system files related to media files when ever i see them.

 

[louishen]

its just a text file containing some info relating to the original file, if you open it up in text edit you will see

can be safely deleted

 

[KeithTeeple]

Usually those files can be safely deleted without any problems.

 

[Albert Reeder]

Thank you very much folks, I appreciate the info.