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[clockout1]

My flash drive has become cluttered with tons of files that begin with "._". Whenever I use it on the school Macs, it seems to fill up the flash drive with these files. They are hidden, but I have hidden files shown, and this becomes incredibly annoying when I'm going through all my files. Is there any way I can delete all these stupid files in bulk, as opposed to going through all my folder subdivisions to find them?

Also, what are these files?

EDIT: ...is this the right board? It seems a little out of place.

[Stargrasper]

FYI - I'm assuming you're using Windows.  I actually had to double check this...I don't use DOS commands very often...to mass-delete these files on Windows, enter the following into the command line.

Open the commandline on Windows Vista / 7 by opening the start menu and enter 'cmd' into the search box at the bottom.
Type into the commandline the letter of the thumb drive.  For example, if the thumb drive comes in as the E: Drive, enter the following.

Code: [Select]

E:
Then type the following command to mass-delete the files.

Code: [Select]

del /S ._*

These are files created by OSX when copying Mac files to non-HFS-supporting filesystems.  Essentially, OSX wants to save additional data about files that the filesystem of the thumb drive (probably FAT32 or NTFS) doesn't normally save, so OSX creates these '._*' files to store that additional information.

Technically this would probably be better placed in Life Advice, but I can still help...