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Cubytus

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Mar 2, 2007
1,444
25
Hi there,

I connected an ExFAT formatted external HDD that I routinely use to store applications installers (both Windows and Mac, and bigger than 4GB, hence choosing ExFAT since NTFS is read-only) to a Windows 7 virtual machine on my Mac. This drive has seen OS X commonly reporting an error and refusing to mount it, unless I manually checked it in Disk Utility. This checking failed, of course, but it seems to be a known issue of ExFAT on the Mac.

Now, for some reason, Windows sees it as unformatted, as for Mac OS X, it is unreadable.

Given the short time it was connected to Windows and that the disk was mostly idle, I am pretty sure a glitch happened in the virtual machine and the data is still there, and only "something" in the partition header has failed. Where should I go to ask this question that seems to be Windows-specific? Is there a way, say, with a Mac software, to switch the drive back to its original state?
 
Hi there,

I connected an ExFAT formatted external HDD that I routinely use to store applications installers (both Windows and Mac, and bigger than 4GB, hence choosing ExFAT since NTFS is read-only) to a Windows 7 virtual machine on my Mac. This drive has seen OS X commonly reporting an error and refusing to mount it, unless I manually checked it in Disk Utility. This checking failed, of course, but it seems to be a known issue of ExFAT on the Mac.

Now, for some reason, Windows sees it as unformatted, as for Mac OS X, it is unreadable.

Given the short time it was connected to Windows and that the disk was mostly idle, I am pretty sure a glitch happened in the virtual machine and the data is still there, and only "something" in the partition header has failed. Where should I go to ask this question that seems to be Windows-specific? Is there a way, say, with a Mac software, to switch the drive back to its original state?

Sorry that this is a late response. If you've already found an answer to your question, just disregard this post.

Windows forums are very easy to find, as are Apple related forums. Do a quick Google Search for them. I would suggest using the most popular one.

Anyways, I would suggest you back up the files that are on it if at all possible. If not, I would suggest formatting it again. Format it for FAT32 if possible. I don't know if an NTFS formatted drive will work with Mac OS X.
 
Well it's sort of solved, in the sense that I did found aWindows software to extract data, but losing all original hierarchy, instead using its own, senseless (to me) one, cutting files and corrupting others. The software doesn't seem to test what is functional, and what is not. As I stated, the disk is seen as unformatted by Windows, there's no way I could back anything up from it. And it has absolutely nothing to do with formatting, being precisely an operation that MUST NOT be performed in state. And FAT32 won't hold 4GB+ files.

Sure there are TONS of Windows-oriented forums, but I'd like to go where acneic 13-yrs old trolls don't hang. They seem to be especially common on Windows forums. That's why I came here for advice.
 
I had various issues with exFat in OSX, finder would be very slow, moving or deleting files would take 45 seconds, even tough the drive performed excellent in Windows
 
I had various issues with exFat in OSX, finder would be very slow, moving or deleting files would take 45 seconds, even tough the drive performed excellent in Windows
Indeed. Notably, the drive would indicate it's unable to mount due to errors, then mount just fine. This is a known problem with ExFAT drives on OS X. But it's not like there was an alternative to store 4GB+ files on a cross-platform-readable drive.
 
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