I have a flash drive which I am using to transfer files between several computers, including computers running Ubuntu 20.04, Ubuntu 22.04, macOS 12.6, and Windows 10. The flash drive was formatted as exFat with a GPT partition table using gparted in Ubuntu 22.04, using exfatprogs which was installed automatically.
The flashdrive works fine except when trying to mount the drive in Ubuntu 22.04 after using it with macOS. Some further experimentation shows that there is something about the contents of the .Spotlight-V100 folder that macOS creates on the drive that Ubuntu 22.04 cannot handle.
When trying to mount the drive when it has a Spotlight folder on it, one of several things happens:
- if I try to access it through the Files GUI, it hangs for a while and then the drive completely dissapears (doesn't even register as a device in df or gparted)
- if I try to cd and ls, it hangs for a while and then either the device dissapears or ls succeeds but throws errors such as "ls: reading directory '.': Input/output error"
Removing the Spotlight folder causes the drive to work just fine. Adding the spotlight folder back, even if I added a copy of the folder using an OS such as Ubuntu 20.04, causes the drive to have issues again. I only ever have these issues with Ubuntu 22.04; all 3 other operating systems I have tried have no issues with the spotlight folder.
Any insight or suggested fixes would be appreciated.
