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this post was submitted on 08 Oct 2025
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Fuckin
thumbs.dbandlost+foundhiding on every USB stick.Seriously fuck thumbs.db anywhere it can be found.
THIS IS WHY NTFS HAS ALTERNATE DATA STREAMS, USE THEM YOU FUCKERS YOU CREATED IT.
EXPLAIN HOW
Alternate data streams look like normal files but with an appended identifier.
For example test.txt:stream1 is an alternate data stream of test.txt. Move or copy the file and the ADS goes with it.
They can be created like other files (“echo > test.txt:stream1”)
You can see them with “dir /r” at the command line.
You can even have an alternate data stream with no corresponding file. In my opinion this is what thumbs.db should have been.
you are shitting me, that's so cool. This command only works for NTFS?
It works, and yes only on NTFS… but many applications may not be able to open these “files”.
It’s actually sort of a weird historical thing, goes back to the roots of Windows NT in VMS and also compatibility with Mac OS (classic) and its “resource forks”
OMG you're taking me back to ResEdit
Back 20+ years ago I used alternate data streams to his my collection of files (the ones you find online as a teenager) behind a text file. You can shove anything you want (I think) in them, even including extensions to make sure it opened in the right program (i.e. test.txt:malware.msi).
We use Btrfs not NTFS here
https://github.com/maharmstone/btrfs
Yes well you’re not wrong.
Although I use ext4.
For Linux, the equivalent is Extended Attributes, although they come with significant limitations.
Easiest fix, change the folder view to another, like "list", then back and it won't be locked anymore. Might take a second or two, but will unlock.
Not sure what you’re talking about. “Locked”?
You mean list? Click these icons and change the folder view from icons to something else, like "list" or "details", then thumbs.db can be deleted without windows bitching.
You can also change under View menu at the top.
No I mean “locked”.
I don’t care about windows bitching about these files, I am offended that it shits them (and “desktop.ini”) all over everywhere.
It’s a total hack, and pathetic for a company the size of Microsoft.
What drives me batty about
thumbs.dbis that on a modern high end machine with an nvme drive it's not meaningfully faster then just regenerating thumbnails on demand every time, and in fact can be slower under some circumstances. Yet there's no "I don't need this turn it off" option.What about remote drves though?
For whatever insane windows-y reason, having a
thumbs.dbfile on a network share is one of those slower scenarios for me. Which is odd because you'd expect that to be the kind of situation where it's actually useful.Or as my parents call them, "A virus!"
I have lost+found on my Linux drives... what am I doing wrong?
Nothing.
If you run fsck (filesystem check), it will look for blocks of data that look like files, but have no actual filename attached. Simplified, that can happen as a result of unexpected shutdowns (like kernel panic) or IO conflicts (where one process deletes the file but the other writes data to where the file used to be). If fsck finds such "lost files", it will put them in lost+found on the respective volume.
If you have trouble with missing files after a crash, it might be worth looking for them there. Otherwise, it probably doesn't matter.