Flash Drive locked folder

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Level 1

110 points

Flash Drive locked folder

Hi all ,
I recently bought a 4Gig flash drive to use as a very large spare HD on my Mac . I'm an image collector/history buff and all the images I have collected are starting to slow my comp down a bit so I started transferring them into my new Flash drive to get them off my HD . When I bought this particular drive it had advertised a few built in cheese apps meant for windows that I had no interest in , but the price was right . At the time i didn't care because I knew my mac wouldn't read them anyway , and they did not even show up at all . I then happily started my transfers , I got a few of the usual file char errors but thought nothing of it . When all was said and done , all my images were gone from the folder I created ! Not only that , the folder is now locked and I cant unlock it and trash it ! any Ideas?

PwrMac G4 1.25 dual everything, Mac OS X (10.3.x)

Posted on Mar 1, 2009 4:32 PM

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Answer 1

Mar 1, 2009 6:59 PM in response to Tracy Rapier

Are you talking about the original folder on your computer or the folder that was created on the flash drive? I will assume the latter.

Flash drives usually come formatted for PC machines, in FAT format. If you are using this drive exclusively with your Mac you might want to partition and format it for Mac use. I haven't had any real problems using a PC format drive with Macs but there are some file limitations and it makes life easier just to use Mac format (HFS extended) if that's all you need.

[Formatting & Partitioning a Hard Drive in OS X - Tiger and Leopard|http://www.kenstone.net/fcp homepage/partitioningtiger.html]

[Journaling, Zeroing, Partitioning & OS 9 driver|http://forums.bombich.com/viewtopic.php?t=4084]

[Kappy's extensive hard drive formatting post|http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=8340551&#8340551]

[BDaqua's Formatting instructions|http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=8901255#890125 5]

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Answer 2

Mar 1, 2009 5:19 PM in response to Tracy Rapier

Hi again Tracy,

It sounds as if you have lost your images that you were trying to transfer to this flash drive? If you have truly lost them and you are left with the folder on your computer and you get the "locked" error when trying to move the folder to the trash or it just won't delete from the trash you might want to try the steps found in Dr. Smoke's, of the X-Lab, excellent FAQ Solving Trash Problems. In particular the link for dealing with locked files and folders.

hope that helps some,

LS 🙂

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Answer 3

Tracy Rapier Author

Level 1

110 points

Mar 2, 2009 3:29 PM in response to Tracy Rapier

I have emptied the flash drive back onto my HD and then partitioned it as you suggested with the Mac format and replaced the folders back onto it . the folder shows that it is unlocked but the icon shows locked still and deleting it is not possible at the moment .

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Answer 4

Mar 2, 2009 9:35 PM in response to Tracy Rapier

I'm a bit lost. Where is this locked folder? I thought it was created on the drive initially and partitioning and formatting should have erased everything on the drive.

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