ExFAT – ProDrive woes…

[Jeremy Garchow]

[tad newberry] ” is “FAT-32” the same as “MS-DOS (FAT)”?”

Yep.

[tad newberry] “and does FAT-32 allow for files bigger than 4GB?”

Nope.

[Zane Barker]

[tad newberry] “is “FAT-32” the same as “MS-DOS (FAT)””

Yes and no, a lot of people call use the terms interchangeably, but technically no MS-DOS was an a old operating system. MS-DOS 3.3 for example introduced the FAT16 format.

[tad newberry] “how do i format in FAT-32, because Disk Utility does not offer it as an option”

A hard drive must me partitioned using the Master Boot Record scheme in order to be able to choose choose FAT32

[tad newberry] “does FAT-32 allow for files bigger than 4GB”

Like I said in my first post no. You will get an error message if you try.

**Hindsight is always 1080p**

[Tad Newberry]

i don’t get it…so why would i want FAT-32 if it won’t take anything over 4GB? it seems like ExFAT is the only (real) choice???

thanks for helping out a bonehead!
__________________________

FCS3
2.66 GHz Quad-Core Mac Pro
6GB RAM
NVIDIA GeForce GT 120
…and a few TeraBytes o’ storage
(then it’s on to PetaBytes, ExaBytes and MosquitoBytes!)

[Zane Barker]

[tad newberry] “i don’t get it…so why would i want FAT-32 if it won’t take anything over 4GB?”

Because FAT32 is the only format that both windows and macs can both read and write onto. But not only does it have a 4GB file size limit but it makes the drive slower.

exFAT aka FAT64 is only supported in some versions of windows after an additional software install.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ExFAT

But if your going to have to install additional software you might as well install software on the windows machine that lets you read and write a regular mac formatted drive.

**Hindsight is always 1080p**

[Michael Gissing]

The other alternative is to use NTFS which is a modern windows format without the file size limits. You can write from the Mac to an NTFS drive in two ways. One is to purchase software for the Mac that lets you write to NTFS.

https://www.paragon-software.com/home/ntfs-mac/
https://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/system_disk_utilities/ntfs3g.html

I haven’t used them so can’t vouch for them. I have used MacDrive for years and it is excellent.

The other way that I use here is to network the Mac & PCs and file transfer via ethernet.

[Robert Shullich]

If you are trying to format a driver on Windows and the drive is larger than 32GB in size, then FAT32 will not be provided as an option. You must format it as FAT32 on a non-microsoft system or use a utility (such as a partition manager) to format the drive as FAT32.

there are rigt now 4 members of the FAT famility, FAT12 (for floppies), FAT16, FAT32 and exFAT. Each has a different infrastructure and file organization. FAT32 uses a 4 byte field for file lengths and can’t support more than 4GB file sizes (actually 4GB less a few bytes. exFAT uses a byte length, and can support 16EIB file sizes, however the largest file system size is slightly less than 128 PIB, so you can never reach the maximum file size.

If Apple did not fully implement the exFAT according to specifications, this will casue an issue in Windows. As part of the exFAT specification, the file drivers will inspect the integrity of the filesystem as well as compatibility before a mount, otherwise if the check fails the FS should not mount. The FS has checksums all over the place, and if a checksum is bad or not computed properly, the FS should fail to mount.

[Robert Shullich]

One more thng, I have a blog on exFAT at rshullic.wordpress.com and also have a SANS paper on the technical internals of the exFAT file system.

[Rahul Duggal]

Paragon NTFS is the way to go (in case you client doesn’t want to go through the hassle of installing extra software on his PC to read the HFS formatted HDD’s.) Also note that the HDD that you present to your client should not be formatted in GUID partition table but rather in MBR partition table (considering that he is running anything below Windows 7, But do note that formatting in MBR is not possible in Snow Leopard) otherwise, there isnt any problem.

While exFAT may be an excellent format the interoperability between Windows & OSX using it remains IFFY at best. So its better to use MacFuse or Paragon NTFS on your Mac to write to a NTFS formatted HDD for submitting work to your client.

[Alan Lacey]

I use the free version of the Paragon software with no problems. It’s a bit slow at writing to and NTFS disk and haven’t established if buying the full version would speed it up any.

Anyway it just works!

Alan

FlashXDR,XDcamHD,XDcamEX,D9 etc
FCS,AE,Combustion,LiquidSilver,Vegas,Edius,
G5,MBP,Vista64,XP

[Tad Newberry]

Wow, thanks for all the input on this guys! I was about to do the option of telling my client to purchase MacDrive, but today it seems better if I buy Paragon or MacFuse so i’m speaking his language rather than expecting him (or others) to speak mine. I’ll look into both of those options and get this thing going…

Thanks again!

thanks for helping out a bonehead!
__________________________

FCS3
2.66 GHz Quad-Core Mac Pro
6GB RAM
NVIDIA GeForce GT 120
…and a few TeraBytes o’ storage
(then it’s on to PetaBytes, ExaBytes and MosquitoBytes!)