FINDER.DAT and RESOURCE.FRK

Question

FINDER.DAT and RESOURCE.FRK

When I copy folders from OS9 they appear with two extra items, FINDER.DAT and RESOURCE.FRK.

FINDER.DAT is a Unix Executable File, usually 4 KB, so there can't be much there.

RESOURCE.FRK is a folder appearing to contain the same items as in the original folder, but none of them will open.

Is it all right for me to remove these two items?

iMac, Mac OS X (10.4.11), 2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo 1GB RAM

Posted on Mar 3, 2008 1:34 AM

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Answer 1

Mar 3, 2008 2:44 AM in response to David Fielker

David Fielker wrote:
When I copy folders from OS9 they appear with two extra items, FINDER.DAT and RESOURCE.FRK. ...

how does this question relate to this part (iMovieHD6) of the Apple board ... ?

and: never fumble the file 'double'-structure of OS≤9 (ressource and data fork...).. you loss your files immediately ..

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Answer 2

Mar 3, 2008 3:17 AM in response to Karsten Schlüter

As before, I also intended this to be a new topic!

Not sure what you mean. The folders came from my old computer and I do not have OS9 on my new one.

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Answer 3

Mar 3, 2008 10:23 PM in response to David Fielker

Obviously it is not OS9 to blame but the way you copied the files from the OS9 Mac. Did you use some non-Mac filessystem to store the files in some step? If yes, then it was that step that disassembled the data+resource fork file into an Apple Double format with separate files.

Now, stripping the resource for off is usually OK IF you are handling pure cross-platform data files (.doc, .jpg, .dv etc). The Mac apps sometimes store some info in the resource fork but usually it is not important and can be re-created (preview thumbnails etc).

But some files like applications will corrupt if the lose their resource fork, even into a separate file.

So: it is best to use Mac-formatted volumes (a Mac share on a Windows network works too) to move Mac specific files. Another option is to wrap them into a container that will protect them in a non-Mac formatted volume. Compressing them with Mac utilities to a .sit, .sitx, .zip etc file does that. Mac OS X compresses .zip files with the resource fork intact.

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Answer 4

Mar 4, 2008 1:40 AM in response to Matti Haveri

Ah yes! I transferred using a USB high-speed flash drive, which is obviously Windows based. I think all the transferred files are WP (in ClarisWorks4!), JPEG photos or music in Sibelius files, so no applications.

Thanks.

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Answer 5

Mar 4, 2008 1:54 AM in response to David Fielker

USB high-speed flash drive, which is obviously Windows based

You could have formatted it as Mac OS Extended; then the resource forks would have been left intact.

Anyways, your data files apparently survived the loss of resource forks.

BTW, iMovie projects corrupt if they are stored on non-Mac volumes. AFAIR iMovie is too picky about the creator/type metadata info which is lost there. Luckily it is quite easy to restore that info with tools like FileBuddy etc.

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