._ files question HELP

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Level 1

8 points

._ files question HELP

HI,

im kind of new to some of the filing system with macs and I seem to run into a lot of ._ files, I know what some are, but I was backing up my itune library yesterday and I came over two duplicated files 2 called ._itunes preferences list and ._.itunes preferences list and 2 called ._sentinel and ._.sentinel. If someone could advine shock to keep ir woould help. Thanks!

MacBook Pro, External had 2 tb

Posted on Mar 30, 2015 11:04 PM

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Answer 1

etresoft

Level 8

47,144 points

Mar 31, 2015 6:59 AM in response to Squintyeyezz

Normally those are various pieces of metadata associated with a file that cannot be stored inside the file itself. They are given this _ prefix and the "." prefix to make them hidden. Usually they show up (or pollute) on any non-native HFS+ file system that a Mac connects to. If the Mac doesn't have the native file system it expects, it just stuffs all of this other data into this other file.

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