Thousands of hidden files beginning with ._

Well actually you can remove that ._ from the files fairly easily with namewiz. And it's made for stuff like this, even if you're dealing with thousands of files.

NameWiz SoftByte Labs

Replace/Remove and Insert/Delete:

Replace/Remove will let you replace parts of file names with a new one or using sequential names from the generator. Remove let you remove common parts of file names. Insert/Delete let you insert new or sequential text anywhere in a file name while Delete let you delete parts of file name based on position and can delete backwards.

And as for unhiding them, this guide should do the trick.
Set or Unset Hidden Attribute of Files and Folders in Windows 10 | Tutorials

g41851 said:

I was cleaning up my music tags and the program I was using revealed that I have thousands of small files that begin with "._"
I am guessing this is a result of changing from a Mac to a PC..

The hidden files beginning with '._' are the 'resource fork' part of a file as used by MacOS. There is one for each data file on a Mac. They hold metadata about the file such as the date it was last opened.

When you export files from a Mac to a usb drive in order to copy them to a PC then you invariably end up getting these too. Unless you have iTunes installed on your PC then they are unlikely to be of any use in Windows and could be deleted. If you do use iTunes in Windows then I'd leave them alone.

"._" Files These invisible files are "resource fork" segments of files that are being created on the external volume. In Macintosh filesystems (HFS and HFS ) there is support for two types of file information: one is the resource fork, and the other is the data fork. The data fork will contain user-supplied information such as the text of a word document, and the resource fork will contain information about the document such as author, document-specific preferences, and other metadata.

Invisible files with "._" prefix are created on some shared volumes and external disks - CNET

If you are completely sure you want to delete them all, then open a Command Prompt (not an admin one, a normal one will do). NB: these steps will delete them completely with no option to restore them from the Recycle Bin so you need to be really sure you don't need them for any Apple-based software such as iTunes!

The easiest way to find and open the command prompt is to click on Start and type COMMAND, then use the commands...

CD MUSIC
DEL ._* /A:H /S /P

The /A :H option says search for hidden files, the /S option says search sub-folders. The optional /P option will prompt for confirmation for each file to be deleted, leave it out if you are really sure you want to delete every one of them. In this example I have copied some "._" files into my Music folder from from a usb of photos that was made on a Mac.

I'm having problems with this as well, except I had already deleted about 127,000 ._ files from a SATA drive and now I can't get the Recycle Bin to empty. I've tried using PowerShell and Disk Cleanup and they're both stuck.

Should I just let it go and see if it eventually deletes or is there something else I could try?

Thanks!

(Update)

If you're experiencing this, just let it chug along. It might look like it's doing nothing, but they will eventually delete (after many hours.)