The exFAT wonders

Mr Gavoni · 08:25 AM

Now check this out.

I have a MacBook Pro 15'' 2012 with OS X Mountain Lion 8.2 on one partition and Windows 7 on the other (Boot Camp). I replaced the optical drive with another HDD, in fact I used the original 500GB Macintosh HD as additional HD and installed a new SSD as the main drive.

Not knowing what to format the original HDD in, I'd read that exFAT would be compatible with both systems, so I proceeded to format it like that, and then I transferred over 300GB (music and other files) on it, confident that I'd've been able to modify the drive from both W7 and OS X.

Today I was playing some of music on the HDD in OS X and all of a sudden the playback became intermittent, as if there was some glitch. I saved the music I wanted to play on the SSD, and it went fine; but then for some reason I had to restart the computer, and upon reboot, surprise surprise, Mountain Lion tells me that there is disk that needs formatting. I'm like, wtf?

Well it was the HDD. The partition had become all of a sudden unreadable, so I had to reformat it, thereby losing all the data.

Now I am (hopefully) recovering the data with Aidfile, which is still running and smoothly too, but - again - WTF. I seem to have read somewhere that exFAT can cause instability cross-platform problems, but this is epic.

Now I am going to reformat with Mac Extended Journaled and to hell with Windows.

SVTmaniac · Feb 5, 2013, 09:40 AM

I actually just had the same problem

I had a 1TB external drive that held all my music and backup files. I switched to a new Mac Mini from a PC and wanted to use it on both systems so I transferred all the files from the external to the internal of the Mac Mini. I formatted the external in exFAT and then transferred all the files back to the external. I was able to read and write to the drive just fine on the Mini and I verified all my data was there. I deleted all the files off the internal of the Mini thinking everything was just fine.

I put the external on my PC and it didn't see the drive at all. It actually showed the drive as having 1TB of unallocated space on it

So then I plugged it back into the Mini and guess what? Nothing. All the data was gone and it said there was no partition on the drive. I lost everything.

I haven't attempted any data recovery on it yet but I doubt it will be successful.

Feb 5, 2013, 08:17 AM	#1
Mr Gavoni macrumors newbie Join Date: Feb 2013	The exFAT wonders Now check this out. I have a MacBook Pro 15'' 2012 with OS X Mountain Lion 8.2 on one partition and Windows 7 on the other (Boot Camp). I replaced the optical drive with another HDD, in fact I used the original 500GB Macintosh HD as additional HD and installed a new SSD as the main drive. Not knowing what to format the original HDD in, I'd read that exFAT would be compatible with both systems, so I proceeded to format it like that, and then I transferred over 300GB (music and other files) on it, confident that I'd've been able to modify the drive from both W7 and OS X. Today I was playing some of music on the HDD in OS X and all of a sudden the playback became intermittent, as if there was some glitch. I saved the music I wanted to play on the SSD, and it went fine; but then for some reason I had to restart the computer, and upon reboot, surprise surprise, Mountain Lion tells me that there is disk that needs formatting. I'm like, wtf? Well it was the HDD. The partition had become all of a sudden unreadable, so I had to reformat it, thereby losing all the data. Now I am (hopefully) recovering the data with Aidfile, which is still running and smoothly too, but - again - WTF. I seem to have read somewhere that exFAT can cause instability cross-platform problems, but this is epic. Now I am going to reformat with Mac Extended Journaled and to hell with Windows. Last edited by Mr Gavoni; Feb 5, 2013 at 08:25 AM.
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Feb 5, 2013, 09:40 AM	#2
SVTmaniac macrumors newbie Join Date: Jan 2013	I actually just had the same problem I had a 1TB external drive that held all my music and backup files. I switched to a new Mac Mini from a PC and wanted to use it on both systems so I transferred all the files from the external to the internal of the Mac Mini. I formatted the external in exFAT and then transferred all the files back to the external. I was able to read and write to the drive just fine on the Mini and I verified all my data was there. I deleted all the files off the internal of the Mini thinking everything was just fine. I put the external on my PC and it didn't see the drive at all. It actually showed the drive as having 1TB of unallocated space on it So then I plugged it back into the Mini and guess what? Nothing. All the data was gone and it said there was no partition on the drive. I lost everything. I haven't attempted any data recovery on it yet but I doubt it will be successful.
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