Remove .trashes and Spotlight folders?

[mavis]

Does anyone here know how to remove the hidden folders Mac OS X creates on thumbdrives, namely the .trashes folder and Spotlight folder? I'm trying to update my Japanese TV using a flashdrive, but it's complaining about the software update not being the only thing on the drive. I've reformatted twice and the only thing other than the software update file are those folder OS X creates automatically. I don't have a Windows machine to connect to, so what other ways are there to delete those hidden, system folders?

 

[mavis]

Judging from the lack of replies, I'm guessing this can only be done in Windows?

 

[xBlue]

The way I take care of that is by having BlueHarvest installed. It also removes the Thumbs.db (Windows) and other annoying files and folders. There are other alternatives as well.

 

[old-wiz]

I remember reading a thread talking about how to do this, but can't for the life of me remember how to do it. Try searching the forum..should be possible to find it...can't be more than a few months back.

 

[plinden]

Open Terminal, type cd /Volumes/<your thumb drive> and type:

rm -rf ._.Trashes .Trashes/ .Spotlight-V100/ .fseventsd/

Eject and use the thumb drive. The next time you plug in the drive those items and folders will be recreated

 

[mavis]

Open Terminal, type cd /Volumes/<your thumb drive> and type:

rm -rf ._.Trashes .Trashes/ .Spotlight-V100/ .fseventsd/

Eject and use the thumb drive. The next time you plug in the drive those items and folders will be recreated

That did the trick. Thank you for your help!

 

[dcorban]

Since Leopard, OS X comes with a utility called dot_clean. Just open terminal and run dot_clean to see the parameters.

 

[plinden]

Since Leopard, OS X comes with a utility called dot_clean. Just open terminal and run dot_clean to see the parameters.

dot_clean doesn't get rid of .Trashes and the other OSX created files and directories. In this case it will just merge ._.Trashes with .Trashes

 

[dcorban]

I specifically used dot_clean to remove the trash files from my SD card. I have a cheap DS flash cart that, for whatever reason, continues to show files and folders I have deleted in its menu. I guess the menu shows hidden files and scans the entire card without regard. I have used dot_clean many times to remove the trash folder and its contents. I didn't do anything fancy, and it did remove the trash files and folders.