-
External drive EXFAT problem, any ideas?
A client gave me a brand new Western Digital “mybook” external drive, to archive his HD files on and to be used for “sneaker-netting” the files from my suite to his server. When I connected it to my edit system and opened up Apple’s Disk Utility, it offered me three options for formatting, and I chose ExFAT because the utility said that would make the drive both PC and mac-readable. I then loaded up very nearly 2a full 2 TB of high def prores and h.264 files to the drive, checked that my macs here could read it, and sent it off to the client for testing.
Client has Windows XP and when they plug in the drive, all their computer wants to do with it is re-format it, can’t read the files.
Suggestions? Options?
-
5 Replies
-
Windows XP did not support exFAT out of the box.
However, Microsoft did add support back in 2009. Your client would have to install this update:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=19364
Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive | RenderBreak [blog] | Profile [LinkedIn] -
Walter, I plugged the drive into a PC here that runs Windows 7 and it isn’t recognized at all.
I just now found a nugget on the web that said you have to do the EXFAT formatting on an actual PC for PC’s to be able to read it along with macs. I see a day full of staring at progress bars in my future, as I copy the portable back into my RAID, re-format the portable, then re-load it.
Unless there’s another answer?
-
You’re the second person to recommend that software solution, sounds like the thing to do… I’ll see if the client would rather pay for the software, or just have me take about 42 hours out of my week to re-do the entire drive and files for him, for free.
I wonder which option he’ll prefer?
😛
Even though this sounds like the best solution, is there any other, cheaper solution, besides my time-intensive re-build of the drive?
-
Solved the problem using this tip about master Boot Record setting:
I know this appears to be resolved, but people kept saying Apple can’t do exFAT correctly. This is wrong. The problem is that Apple defaults new partitions to GUID, which is bootable on a new Mac. But Windows can’t read it. You have to manually choose MBR (Master Boot Record) as the partition type, which is bootable in Windows, and then format as exFAT. I just did this on my MBP and the whole flash drive shows up as exFAT on my Windows machine perfectly
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4931772?start=0&tstart=0I had a similar problem with a USB key that I formatted in OSX Snow Leopard. Turns out I had chosen UUID as partition scheme which Win7 didn’t like. Reformatted as MBR in OSX and now Win7 is able to see the exFat partition properly. I had to manually assign a drive letter to it, but I was able to read/write to the partition without problems.
-
17 hours, overnight. It was ready for me in the morning.
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up