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Remove resource fork files from a FAT volume on MacOS

Robert Sonnberger
September 10, 2010Software engineer at makandra GmbH

Be careful!
The following solution will delete files on a volume. If you don't know exactly what you're doing, you can run into big trouble with your computer.

I play mp3 files on my car stereo that are stored on a SD-Card.
When I've copied those mp3 files to the FAT formatted SD-Card on my Mac, then I will see those nasty resource fork files (beginning with "._") for every file and folder on my car stereo. In most cases those resource fork files are important and invisible and don't bother you – on my car stereo they do.

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To get rid of those files you can delete them all at once with these simple steps:

  • Attach your FAT formatted device so that the volume icon appears on your desktop / in your finder window's volume list.

  • Open the application "Terminal", stored on your Macintosh HD/Applications/Utilities/.

  • At the command line of the Terminal Application, type the following and hit enter:
    ls /Volumes

  • Find and remember the VOLUMENAME of your FAT formatted device. Type the following and hit enter (replace VOLUMENAME with the name of your FAT Volume you remembered before) and hit enter:
    find /Volumes/VOLUMENAME/. -name "._*" -exec rm {} \;

  • Quit the Terminal App. Unmount/Eject your FAT formatted device. Done.

Posted by Robert Sonnberger to makandra dev (2010-09-10 18:01)