You're right, same issue with Hidden Cleaner (and Rockbox rocks!!).
Still, .Spotlight is only a single small folder, as long as it's deactivated for the USB drive(s).
Most importantly it does not intervene with play lists etc.

Ah, sorry, I just found out they advertise the removal of .Spotlight and other folders.
Still, I'm not sure if that amounts to 16.95$.

"Automatically remove ".DS_Store" files."
???? If you have an non HFS Volume you simple should not use such cleaning tools !
Because all will delete .DS_Store in which suche cosmetic things like folder icons are saved.

NOOTILUS, I don't know about v3.0.1 for which you wrote your comment, but v3.0.3 has an option to 'Allow disks to have custom icons'. That should at least solve your coloured folder problem.

Icons are not stored in .DS_Store. There is a hidden file called Icon? which carries that data.

Are you certain of that?

Can you provide a source?

That certainly does not make sense. The information she be stored either in the HFS+ extended attributes or the Spotlight database.

Yes, I'm certain. You can verify it yourself (as I did) by examining a .DS_Store file in any folder that contains files with Finder/Spotlight comments, then removing the .DS_Store and noticing the comments are gone (maybe not instantly due to caching; restarting Finder).

I don't know offhand where good sources of information about .DS_Stores files is but there's some in this excellent two-year-old Mac OS X Hints article:

Explaining the Finder's view options and toolbar visibility


I hope everyone creating utilities (like BlueHarvest) that delete .DS_Store files has at least that much understanding of their purposes. And I still feel that adequate warning might help people make more informed choices whether or not to delete them.

The URL was stripped from my reply. Here's another attempt:

www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20030305025744788

Otherwise, search for Mac OS X Hints for "view options toolbar visibility" to locate the article.

For related info, see the last paragraph of:

Mac OS X 10.4: How to prevent .DS_Store file creation over network connections
docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=301711

... and follow the link to:

Mac OS X: Get Info Comments May Not Appear for Remote Volumes
docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107822

The second article you posted (http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107822) contradicts your statements. It seems that the data exists both in the DS_Store file as well as the local Spotlight database. When editing the Spotlight comments on a remote file, the changes you make will ONLY apply on the local machine, regardless of the use of this software. If copying an entire folder, however, the DS_Store file will be transferred and the comments WILL appear on other machines.

Ironically, it seems that if you use this software to disable DS_Store files on remote volumes the Finder's behavior actually becomes more consistent!

I've verified that removing a DS_Store file causes the Spotlight comments to disappear from the get info window. The data is still searchable via Spotlight, however. It seems to me that this is actually a bug.

Hopefully Apple will sort this all out in the next version of OS X. The best course of action would be to stop using DS_Store files altogether and take advantage of the metadata capabilities of the filesystem.

Maybe there's a contradiction since my original comments didn't take any local vs. remote issues into account.

Anyway, thanks for the discussion. Maybe best to end here by saying we agree that .DS_Store files should somehow go away. Or, minimally, not be used for storing Finder/Spotlight comments because some users will delete those files and unwittingly wipe out the comments. That's the main point I wanted to communicate.