# Ignore files in stage external dependency/output

**URL:** https://discuss.dvc.org/t/ignore-files-in-stage-external-dependency-output/1889
**Category:** Questions
**Created:** [December 20, 2023, 10:57pm UTC](https://discuss.dvc.org/t/ignore-files-in-stage-external-dependency-output/1889 "2023-12-20T22:57:06Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Showing post:** 3

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### Author: ![gregstarr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/c77e96/32.png) [@gregstarr](https://discuss.dvc.org/u/gregstarr)
#### Post date: [December 22, 2023, 1:55pm UTC](https://discuss.dvc.org/t/ignore-files-in-stage-external-dependency-output/1889/3 "2023-12-22T13:55:41Z")

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are external dependencies not recommended? They seem important for large datasets, but not being able to ignore files makes them significantly less convenient to use. DVC sees that the mtime of .DS\_Store files is recent and so wants to re-hash the whole folder. This is somewhat contradictory to this post [Maximum data size - #4 by skshetry](https://discuss.dvc.org/t/maximum-data-size/1857/4) which implies that we won’t have to rehash large datasets often

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