Files appear on flash drive ONLY in Windows and take up space!

[MrCheeto]

I have a flash drive that appears to have NO files on it when looking under OS X. Yet under windows I have several files and they're taking up all of the space!

I can NOT delete these folders or access them under OS X! What gives?! I have to format the darn thing to get my space back and that's WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG!

Any ideas?

 

[MacDawg]

Do you know how the drive is formatted?

 

[MrCheeto]

It's FAT32.

 

[neutrino23]

Let me guess. In windows you see something like .Trashes on the USB stick?

This is an invisible folder put there by OS X. There might also be a .spotlight file.

It does no harm to delete these.

In OS X after dragging a file to the trash make sure to empty the trash before removing the USB stick. This will recover nearly all the space.

In Spotlight preferences tell it to not index the USB stick. That should solve the problem with .Spotlight.

 

[MrCheeto]

I do find the trash file sometimes, but other times I find files in the top level of the drive, files that I've deleted in OS X. I always delete the trash after deleting a file on the drive, yet every time I use it the free space goes down and down and down...

Let's say I move something to the trash on one mac and forget to empty. What can I do then if I can't get back to that mac?

 

[Dave Braine]

Reformat using Disk Utility, or delete them on a PC by going to Control Panel>Folder Options>View>Show Hidden Files and Folders.

 

[MrCheeto]

Crap...why doesn't Apple think things like this through?