How to delete *:Zone.Identifier:$DATA file

x2611 · Post by **x2611** » 15. Jan 2009, 11:38

Hi all. Something created a file called img05021.tiff:Zone.Identifier:$DATA on my real Windows shared NTFS partition. It happened when I was in the Windows guest in VBox, under Linux, exporting a TIF image with Canon DPP. This file cannot be deleted by anything. I tried scandisk/reboot, Unlocker, from Linux, from CMD, from VBox, with TrimZoneID, with stream.exe. Nothing can delete it or rename it.

The : and $ characters are most likely the culprit.

Is there a solution to this without reformatting the drive?

Thx in advance.

Post by **Sasquatch** » 15. Jan 2009, 22:13

The file is a zone identifier of the named file (img05021.tiff), which should be hidden by default on Windows systems. This is a description file from the NTFS file system. You can't do anything with it, until you remove the original file from a Windows system so the meta data is removed too.

x2611 · Post by **x2611** » 15. Jan 2009, 23:15

Sasquatch wrote:You can't do anything with it, until you remove the original file from a Windows system so the meta data is removed too.

Thanks for the info, however that TIFF file has been deleted a long time ago. I just don't get why scandisk doesn't fix it.

And how come this zone file is visible to begin with? I can't even delete or rename the directory it is in (C:\1 a temp directory I use to convert images).

Post by **Sasquatch** » 18. Jan 2009, 17:27

Seems like a left over bug from NTFS-3g, if you removed the file from your Linux system. I never had this issue, so I can't help you with this. Perhaps google has the answer for you.