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cruiser34

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Aug 10, 2010
23
7
hi :)

i bought a 16GB memory stick that i plugged into my macbook pro out of the packet.
i think this formatted it to FAT, however i wanted to be able to use it to transfer files lager than 2GB (?) (i want to put HD movies on it)

anyway i used the mac disk utility to format to windows NT file system. that worked ok on the MBP, but i plugged the memory stick into my windows laptop and it says the disk is not formatted and only showing 200MB

i put a few large files on the memory stick last night before plugging it into my windows laptop so they may still be on there?


(i have a program called paragon on the MBP that i use to read/write to my external NTFS HDD, i was hoping i could do the same with a memory stick)

any help, enlightenment appreciated :D
 
You can format it to FAT32, this has a single file size limit of 4 GB.

As you stated, formatting to NTFS is another option. Keep in mind that plugging the USB key into another mac that doesn't have Paragon, will have read only access.

When you formatted using Disk Utility, did you define the NTFS partition to cover the entire USB key?
 
Though it should have stayed in the correct partition type, it's at least possible when reformatting as NTFS it accidentally got switched to APM, which Windows wouldn't recognize. Could also just be Paragon doing something Windows doesn't like with the format.

Either way, if you don't mind losing the files on there, the solution is to just reformat it as NTFS using Windows, which the Mac should have no trouble recognizing.

Alternately, if you plan on using it more with a Mac than Windows, you could to it the other way around--format it as HFS on the Mac and install either one of the third-party options or Apple's read-write HFS driver from the Boot Camp tools on your Windows machine, and use it that way.
 
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