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How do I delete hidden files on an external hard drive?

J

jason23432

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Dec 22, 2016
5
0
Hi. I have a 1TB Seagate external hard drive. Today, I erased the entire hard drive using disk utility (with one pass of zeros).

However, once it finished erasing disk utility still showed 663.6 MB as "used" with 58 files. Yet when I open up the hard drive using Finder I can't see any files.

I also tried formatting the external hard drive as FAT...which dropped the number of invisible files to 0, but still about 684kb was used for "something."

Finally, I formatted it back to Mac OS Extended (Journaled)...the file system I want...and the 663.6 MB of invisible data magically reappeared.

So what is this data and how can I get rid of it.

Thank you.
 
What you are seeing is the cost of the file system itself. It has some overhead. Spotlight also creates an empty index, which may explain some of the hidden files.
 
To view hidden files, change this flag in Terminal.

Code: 
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles yes
killall Finder

To re-hide the files:
Code: 
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles no
killall Finder

May just need to empty the trash, I've seen external drives when plugged in show files that were deleted, in the trash.
 
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