File "EA DATA. SF" is being generated when copying to A:

[Mike]

The file EA DATA. SF is being generated by the OS(?)
whenever we copy files to the A: drive. This does this if
I attempt to copy it using windows or at the command
prompt using copy or xcopy. The file being created has
the spaces in the name and it is flagged as System, Read-
only, and Hidden. I am not allowed to get rid of the file
or change its attributes. The only success is to go to an
MS-DOS 6.22 system, remove the attributes, rename the
file, and then delete it.

Does anyone know what is generating this file? It doesn't
appear to be created until the file is copied from a
network drive maintained by Netware.

 

[Mark Zbikowski \(MSFT\)]

Under OS/2, the FAT file system supported something
called Extended Attributes. They were stored in
this file. For a long time, Windows NT supported an
OS/2 subsystem that emulated OS/2 for console
(i.e. textmode) programs. This required the NT
implementation of FAT to also support EA's
(BTW, NTFS also supports them, but there is
no Win32 API to get/set them because they
are pretty useless).

NETWARE, now, does support EA's. So when you
are copying a file from some NETWARE drive
to your local FAT volume and there are EA's present
on that file, the FAT filesystem will happily generate
this file for you.

There is no harm to it, except that it does take up
some space.

 

[IronGodess]

i am trying to revive os/2 warp 4, and all i get on the diskette phase is a involuntery pause and the system crashes on me. the reason for os/2 is that i found it best for a windows replacement, and handels most of what i need, can anyone tell me how to find an ibm problem on windows xp home?