Strange files „.Spotlight“, „.TemporaryItems“ or „.Trashes“: This is where they come from!

Have you found some strange files or directories on your USB drive? When there names are like „.Spotlight“ or „.trashes“, you might want to know, where they are coming from. In most cases you have used that USB drive or camera storage card also on an Apple Mac or Linux Computer: The operating system is creating these files to store some data about the storage device and the deleted items.

When the name of the files or directories ist one of the following, you should not be worried at all:

• .Spotlight
• .Spotlight-V100
• .TemporaryItems
• .Trashes
• System Volume Information
• ._.TemporaryItems

They are hidden on a Mac and only visible on a Windows Computer. The „Spotlight“ directory contains data for the Mac’s search engine spotlight, that helps you to find files faster on your computer and the storage devices that are connected to it.

The „.Trashes“ directory keeps information about files from that drive, that have been put inside the system’s trash can but have not been completely deleted yet.

If you are mainly working on a Windows computer, you can delete these file without any problems – but if you put that USB drive in a Mac again, the Apple operating system will create those files again. Therefore it is totally save to delete those files to free up some space on the drive.