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Robert O.2's avatar
Robert O.2
New member | Level 1
11 years ago
Solved

How to stop ._ (dot dash) files being uploaded

I recently switched my storage folder from internal hard drive to my external drive. Since then, in every drive there's a duplicate under the extension of ._xxxx as well as "conflicted copy of xxxx"....
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  • Richard P.'s avatar
    Richard P.
    10 years ago

    There is no way to hide ._ files, they are created by OSX to store extended attributes when the files are on a filesystem that doesnt support OSX extended attributes.

    How much space they take up depends on the data stored in them - most of the time they are less than a Kilobyte in size.

Rich's avatar
Rich
Icon for Super User II rankSuper User II
10 years ago

So, since my partner accesses our shared dropbox folders with his Mac, and I access them with my Windows machine it seems there is no solution to getting rid of those files, right?

If your partner stores his Dropbox folder on a partition type that doesn't support extended file attributes (such as FAT32, which most external drives are formatted as), then no, there's no solution.

If he stores his Dropbox folder on a partition type that does support extended file attributes, such as the native partition type for OS X/macOS (HFS+ I believe), then this problem won't occur (once you clean up the existing ._ files).

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