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Here is snapshot of my external drive. I never store any files directly in its root folder yet I have bunch of files eula.###.txt and others for example install.exe and similar files. How did they get there?

More important there are a number folders with numeric names. These are all zero bytes folders and has nothing inside them. What does this mean and how did it get there?

Note: I have masked my own files with boxes.

enter image description here

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    They are Windows Updates, which has a habit, of using the largest disk available to store the files. Which updates other than VC++ in the case of the folder you have provided, is more difficult to identify. Folders can be deleted if you don’t care about removing the updates.
    – Ramhound
    Sep 21, 2018 at 15:26
  • For reference: To find the root cause, check this answer of similar question: superuser.com/a/1367433/948071
    – X X
    Oct 19, 2018 at 13:48

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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These are leftover files from installations of Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable for Visual Studio. I had them too. You can safely delete them.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/help/950683/vcredist-from-vc-2008-installs-temporary-files-in-root-directory

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  • You beat me to it, so +1. It doesn't explain the empty folders though, but from doing some quick Googling they are safe to delete.
    – Sonickyle27
    Sep 21, 2018 at 15:29
  • Yes, apparently the empty folders are temporary folders for Windows Updates, with some saying they're the .NET Framework.
    – SUM1
    Sep 21, 2018 at 16:05

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