Quick Fix: Unable to Delete 0 Bytes Folder
September 5, 2012 1 Comment
Have you ever had to delete a folder only to find you cant? You check the properties and they are 0 bytes, you cannot check the security tab as you get a message similar to this.
What is weird, is why this would happen. Secondly, you may even be able to traverse this folder, into folders nested inside it. Very weird.
Enter the MAC.
I don’t know the reason for it, but it seems that on some occasions, when a user on a MAC creates a folder on an NTFS Formatted share, the name you see, does not actually correspond to the name Windows has for the folder.
You will find that the old style DOS 8.3 name is used by the system, but a more friendly name is used for display.
You do remember DOS?
Anyway thanks to the wonder of internet Search, i found this great post on how to work around the issue.
From a CMD prompt you can type in DIR /X and that will show you the actual folder name. You can then use the old RD command on that name, and remove the folder successfully.
Let’s pause for a moment and take a look at an example.
Highlighted in Red is the DOS name, in Green the Display Name, and in Blue the name as it appears in Explorer.
Now, repeat after me, MACS JUST WORK MACS JUST WORK MACS JUST WORK.
About Robert Pearman
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You know when you see the answer to a problem and get that DOH! moment….thank you for this fix it took me back to when I first started in I.T. many many moons ago.