USB in disk utility shows Media and volume?

[Milan254]

When I format a USB flash drive in windows 11 I just get the empty drive and nothing else but the minute I format (erase) any USB drive in Mac (M1 2020 / Ventura) it shows the volume but also the media like Kingston, Sandisk etc. If I take the erased USB ( Fat32 or ExFat ) to my windows laptop I can see the USB has a new file called Library and inside the file is a folder camera, movies, music etc.

Why does Mac create this extra folder/media on the erased USB?

 

[Bigwaff]

it shows the volume but also the media like Kingston, Sandisk etc.

Shows it where? In Disk Utility or in Finder or on your desktop?

 

[chabig]

A picture would be so helpful.

 

[Milan254]

The USB is formatted as Master boot record and Fat32 on Mac.

Take to any PC and you will see the disk not empty it has a library folder which includes other subfolders.

 

[Milan254]

Macbook air M1 2020 MacOS Ventura

If you erase any USB like ExFat or Fat32 so you can read it in your PC you will see two drives

listed in the windows explorer instead of just one. The drive also contains a folder called Library and has several subfolders. My question is, how do you erase a USB to be empty like on PC?

Also, even though you format the USB to Fat32 etc. the Media above the volume will show the scheme is extended Journaled, why?

 

[chabig]

That Library directory you've highlighted is a Windows directory on your hard drive, not the USB drive. The "UNTITLED" USB stick is below it.

 

[Milan254]

Please notice the one USB is now showing as TWO D:/ drives on PC and also notice the Spotlight V100, not to mention some MS word documents created on Mac will fail to open on my PC

 

[DeltaMac]

And, the Library folder is not on your USB.
I think if you eject the USB from your PC, you will continue to see the "Library" folder on the PC.
That's your Windows directory. The "Library" folder will still appear after you Eject that Untitled (D
The .Spotlight-V100 is where the search database file lives, and is used by your macOS -- not useful in any way in Windows. It's a normal part of formatting a volume on your Mac Disk Utility.)
Also, all those files beginning with ._ will not usually open on your PC. Those files are created when you accessed the "real" files on your Mac, then those files are copied to another drive that is not a Mac-type format. Windows can't do anything with those - They keep track of "extended attributes" for the real files. You can safe delete any ._ files.

 

[Milan254]

Thanks for your answer but I still don’t understand why every USB erased on Mac will show as two drives on my PC. There should be C:/, D:/ etc not C:/ D:/ and ghost D:/ drive.

PS: I have many documents from Mac MS 365 word (docx and also as pdf) files and despite the fact they open nicely on Mac when I try to open the files on my PC half will open and half will not, and that is even a bigger problem than the ghost D:/ drive

 

[chabig]

I think the first issue is one with your PC, not your Mac.

The second is an issue with Office, not your Mac. Are you running the latest versions of Office (Word) on both machines? I suspect not.

 

[Milan254]

Maybe you right, I'll re-install windows and MS 365 office and see how it goes. thank

 

[chrfr]

Please notice the one USB is now showing as TWO D:/ drives on PC and also notice the Spotlight V100, not to mention some MS word documents created on Mac will fail to open on my PC

The files that start with the ._ are resource files the Mac uses, not files that are usable on Windows. Scroll down to see the actual files on your disk, and ignore the ones that start with ._ when using Windows.
If you have deleted the actual files on your USB disk, you can safely delete the ._ resource files in Windows.

 

[chabig]

Maybe you right, I'll re-install windows and MS 365 office and see how it goes. thank

I just formatted a USB drive on my Mac as FAT32 and I only got two invisible folders.

 

[Milan254]

Thanks for posting, I get the same. Do you see on your PC two D:/drives for your USB or just one as it should be?

 

[Bigwaff]

With default settings, the navigation pane displays a separate list of USB drives in addition to showing USB drives under This PC. Moving on…

 

[chabig]

Thanks for posting, I get the same. Do you see on your PC two D:/drives for your USB or just one as it should be?

I don't have a Windows PC to check that.

 

[Milan254]

OK, thanks, I will reinstall Windows and office and see how it goes

 

[Milan254]

I think the first issue is one with your PC, not your Mac.

The second is an issue with Office, not your Mac. Are you running the latest versions of Office (Word) on both machines? I suspect not.

You are right, it was my PC. reinstalled Windows 11 and MS office 365 and all is GOOD. Tanks for your tip.

 

[haralds]

The Libraries folder on your sidebar is a quick link to a folder on your main disk and not on the USB disk.
The other folders are for Finder book keeping and do not take much space. There are utilities BlueHarvest that will clean the meta data on ejection.

 

[jaytv111]

That's one drive on the PC. It's showing up in 2 places, one is the "recent locations" kind of thing in the sidebar and the other is the normal listing for drives. You can see it's one drive letter D:

If it was 2 different drive letters it would be two separate drives (most likely partitioned).

The last picture is libraries on your computer, not on the drive.

And yes, there is a thing where if you quick format, the metadata gets erased, but the data is still on the drive and people can reconstruct what was on the filesystem if they want to. So to avoid that you can full format it, if you can find that option. Otherwise what you're seeing is just metadata the Mac makes in its implementation of FAT32.

 

[Fishrrman]

In the pic above, "PNY USB 3.0 FD Media" is the PHYSICAL flash drive itself. What you "hold in your hand".

"UNTITLED" is the LOGICAL volume created on the physical drive (by the OS).

This is completely normal.
It's what you're SUPPOSED to see...