What is Finder.dat?

Alex Ethridge · 1st March 2002

Someone called today asking me what the Finder.dat file is in a lot of his folders. I did a search of the word "finder" in my Master Windows 2000 Server book and the word does not appear. I can't find anything about it on Google either.

What is this file?

anand · 1st March 2002

To copy a macintosh file into MS-DOS disk and back without loosing anything, the system creates in each folder two hidden items, a file named "finder.dat" and a subfolder named "resource.frk".
The data fork is stored in the normal folder, under the main name of the file.The resource fork is stored in the resource folder under a truncated name.

Bye,
Anand.

Alex Ethridge · 2nd March 2002

That's helpful and will explain why finder.dat would be all over the internet; but, why would it be on a personal system that has never been exposed to anything Mac?

shonuff12 · 3rd March 2002

It would not have been there if the machine had no exposure to a mac. Keep in mind that even using windows ported progs, like word, etc etc, and transferring those files to a windows version of word would expose your computers to those files.