I got a DVD off the servers of an educational organization, Project Gutenberg.
Working on a Windows box, I added & deleted a bunch of files, all the while
keeping close track of the total file size as WinXP tells me. It's just a bunch
of HTML files in zillions of folders, some of which hold images.

With the new set of files now on a USB stick, I burn them to a new DVD. I get
indications from the Roxio software that my file size is just barely fitting
the DVD.   I take the USB stick to a Kubuntu Linux box for DVD burning. K3b
asks if I want to copy "hidden files", I say no, and now it's got 295 MiB of
free space!

I cannot think of a scenario where this makes sense.  Roxio being that
incompetent at counting, Project Gutenberg putting 295 MiB or "hidden" junk
into its files, K3b incompetently removing my needed material that I would have
liked on the DVD.

What gives?

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On Fri, 17 Jul 2009 23:42:12 -0400, gregjohn wrote:

>  K3b asks if I want to copy "hidden files", I say no, and now it's
> got 295 MiB of free space!

In Linux, "hidden files" are files with a "." at the beginning of the 
filename.

Jim

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gregjohn wrote:

> I cannot think of a scenario where this makes sense.  Roxio being that
> incompetent at counting, Project Gutenberg putting 295 MiB or "hidden" junk
> into its files, K3b incompetently removing my needed material that I would have
> liked on the DVD.
> 
> What gives?

Windows XP has a habit of filling any folders which happen to contain 
images with a Thumbs.db file, marked as hidden. (Since I'm guessing a 
USB stick would be FAT-formatted, the "hidden" attribute is available.) 
This files can become large is a folder contains many images, or just if 
there's a lot of folders so all the files add up.

Alternatively, maybe K3b means files starting with "." (assuming you 
have any), as Jim suggested.

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:

>
> Windows XP has a habit of filling any folders which happen to contain
> images with a Thumbs.db file, marked as hidden.

Wow, that's probably it.  If I'm going to give this back to Windows users, is
there any reason why removing those thumb files is a bad practice? I did test a
few links on the k3b-burned disk and they work fine, showing the images.  If
not, is there an easy way to tell Windows to stop?

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"gregjohn" <pte### [at] yahoocom> wrote in message
news:web.4a61c164eeb7a6d734d207310@news.povray.org...
> Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:

> > Windows XP has a habit of filling any folders which happen to contain
> > images with a Thumbs.db file, marked as hidden.

> Wow, that's probably it.  If I'm going to give this back to Windows users,
is
> there any reason why removing those thumb files is a bad practice?  I did
test a
> few links on the k3b-burned disk and they work fine, showing the images.
If
> not, is there an easy way to tell Windows to stop?

http://tinyurl.com/llhzpj

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> Wow, that's probably it.  If I'm going to give this back to Windows users, 
> is
> there any reason why removing those thumb files is a bad practice? I did 
> test a
> few links on the k3b-burned disk and they work fine, showing the images. 
> If
> not, is there an easy way to tell Windows to stop?

XP caches the thumbnails for speed, when XP browses a directory
without a thumbs.db, it re-generates all the thumbs, which can
be slow if there are a lot of images. Nothing  important is lost by
deleting it though, it'll regenerate it when needed, it's just slower.

Caching thumbnails can be turned off in folder options, if that's
what you want.

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"Tim Attwood" <tim### [at] anti-spamcomcastnet> wrote:
>
> XP caches the thumbnails for speed, when XP browses a directory
> without a thumbs.db, it re-generates all the thumbs, which can
> be slow if there are a lot of images. Nothing  important is lost by
> deleting it though, it'll regenerate it when needed, it's just slower.
>
> Caching thumbnails can be turned off in folder options, if that's
> what you want.


Thanks. I normally need fast browsing of thumbmail images for just about
everything else I do, so I don't want to make a change to how WinXP works on a
day to day basis.  So I'll just have to make sure I burn the DVD on a linux
box.

Ironically, given the way that KDE 4 messed up the workflow for simple tasks
like moving files around in the file manager, I "have to" use WinXP for the
manipulation of files.

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gregjohn wrote:
> So I'll just have to make sure I burn the DVD on a linux box.

thumbs.db is a hidden file. You can either write a BAT file that deletes 
thumbs.db from the tree you're burning, or you can tell the burner not to 
burn hidden files. It's probably a lot easier than you're making it out to 
be. :-)

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "We'd like you to back-port all the changes in 2.0
    back to version 1.0."
   "We've done that already. We call it 2.0."

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> So I'll just have to make sure I burn the DVD on a linux box.
Normally I set hidden files to be visible, that way you know what
is really going on.
If you use a burning tool then you can check the burn list before
burning the files, and just not include the hidden thumbs file.

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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> gregjohn wrote:
> > So I'll just have to make sure I burn the DVD on a linux box.
>
> thumbs.db is a hidden file. You can either write a BAT file that deletes
> thumbs.db from the tree you're burning, or you can tell the burner not to
> burn hidden files. It's probably a lot easier than you're making it out to
> be. :-)
>

That's a given proclivity on my part. But a scouring of the menus on Roxio
doesn't show any such option.  K3B, OTOH, noticed the hidden files and asked if
I wanted them.

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