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I often see files named 'blabla.exe:Zone.Identifier' when monitoring I/O with Process Monitor.
The files are seen on network-drives.

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  • What are Zone.Identifier files?
  • What does the colon mean in the filename?
  • Is the colon related the file's extended attributes?
  • How do I prevent these files from being created when I copy code files from Windows Explorer to a WSL directory?
Andrew Koster
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Benjamin
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    Could this be moved to ServerFault? – mikemaccana May 30 '20 at 22:10
  • The only way that I found to deal with these annoying "ZoneIdentifier" files was by creating an alias `alias rzi="rm -rf **/*Zone.Identifier"` and running it right before copy files. The other good one was adding `**/*Zone.Identifier` on the `.gitignore` file of my projects. – equiman May 13 '22 at 00:33

1 Answers1

68

The text after the colon is an identifier for an "Alternate Data Stream". ADS is used to store meta-information about the file. For example, the Zone identifier stores whether the file was downloaded from the internet.

Some specific info: About URL Security Zones, Zone.Identifier Stream Name

Best is to google around for more information. Eg. this, this and this.

Finally, here's Streams, the Sysinternals tool for ADS.

Community
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Zabba
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    Just the answer I was looking for! But allow me to publicize a good question from another Stack Exchange site: [Why shouldn't we use words such as 'here' and 'this' in textlinks?](http://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/12100) – hippietrail Dec 09 '12 at 03:00
  • FYI, the [Zone.Identifier Stream Name](https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn392609.aspx) MSDN Link has changed. – Sebastian Wagner Jun 26 '15 at 10:34
  • Dead links have been fixed. – mguassa Jan 01 '16 at 19:13
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    Can I avoid these ADS files as I do not want them? I get them when [copying](https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/issues/4609) from windows to a wsl folder – Timo Nov 24 '20 at 14:27