USB-Stick working under MacOS and Windows -> which Format? Help plz

[AppleMango]

Hi guys,

rookie to MacOS, coming from Windows.

I am sittin in front of the new MBA and we bought a "SanDisk Dual Drive USB-C" 64GB from the Apple Store as well.

It's got those two swivelling sides.

I can't get it to work on both machines.

Here's what we want to do: Put it into a Windows-machine at work, collect *.avi-files and bring those home to convert them and use them on a Macbook (probably *.mp4?) for a PowerPoint presentation.

So with Disk Utility:

1) Stick was formatted to Journal and didn't work; Mac had its own files, Windows hat a 196mb Partition? The interoperability wasn't given.
2) I erased the stick and formatted it to ExFAT - still not working, even though those guides on the internet claim it should work.


Can anybody help me, I am desperate and wanted to use that tomorrow.



Many thanks for your help, it is not easy to make the migration after 20 years outside the Mac/Apple-cosmos.


Thanks and stay safe!

 

[James_C]

Hi - You should format it using the Disk Utility App and choose MS-DOS (FAT) that should work for Mac and Windows.

 

[AppleMango]

Thanks @James Craner for your fast reply!

I will do this first thing in the morning when I am back at the computer.
I was reading that MS-DOS is only for <32GB and ExFAT >32GB? However, I am not really sure what that means practically.

As a sidenote in general: Is it normal for a (metal) USB stick to get quite hot? And why is that?


Good night!

 

[James_C]

You can format a 64GB drive on a Mac to MS-DOS (FAT). However their is a maximum file size of 4GB. ExFAT should work as well, unless you a running a really old version of windows ( prior to XP SP3) or Mac ( prior to Snow Leopard)

 

[ptfuzi]

Exfat works, but can get corrupted very easy on MacOS

 

[AppleMango]

Thanks again for your help guys, I used ExFAT but had to switch to „Master Boot Record“ in order to get it working under Windows. Now it seems perfect, even though I’ve got no idea what all of that actually means .

 

[leman]

Please be careful since exFAT is a very primitive filesystem that offers absolutely no data protection. Don't put anything on it that you don't want to lose and validate the files that you copy over! It is very likely to get silent data corruption, especially on larger files.

 

[Nguyen Duc Hieu]

They are not supposed to be working out of box.
1)
Just format in NTFS.
Mac OS read from NTFS drives very well.
To copy file to it, just use 3rd party program.
2)
or the other way, format in mac OS compatible (APFS etc..)
Install 3rd party program on windows to read/write it

How to Read a Mac-Formatted Drive on a Windows PC

Windows can't normally read Mac-formatted drives, and will offer to erase them instead.

www.howtogeek.com

 

[AppleMango]

Please be careful since exFAT is a very primitive filesystem that offers absolutely no data protection. Don't put anything on it that you don't want to lose and validate the files that you copy over! It is very likely to get silent data corruption, especially on larger files.

Uh, thank you very much for that information - sounds scary, not going to lie.
The files are *.avi clips form a medical system and *.jpg for a PowerPoint presentation.

It is a „one time“ necessity- would you recommend to proceed; afterwards we don’t need the interoperability anymore and we can format the stick back to just work on macOS...

We just got the MacBook, i certainly don’t want to damage it now.
[automerge]1596014693[/automerge]

They are not supposed to be working out of box.
1)
Just format in NTFS.
Mac OS read from NTFS drives very well.
To copy file to it, just use 3rd party program.
2)
or the other way, format in mac OS compatible (APFS etc..)
Install 3rd party program on windows to read/write it

How to Read a Mac-Formatted Drive on a Windows PC

Windows can't normally read Mac-formatted drives, and will offer to erase them instead.

www.howtogeek.com

Thank you, was not aware of that - sounds like a great and safer option then?

 

[Nguyen Duc Hieu]

Thank you, was not aware of that - sounds like a great and safer option then?

I forgot another option:
Connect both machine to the same LAN layer
Share a folder on one machine
Copy to and from that share folder.

You USB stick is useless in this case.

 

[leman]

Uh, thank you very much for that information - sounds scary, not going to lie.
The files are *.avi clips form a medical system and *.jpg for a PowerPoint presentation.

It is a „one time“ necessity- would you recommend to proceed; afterwards we don’t need the interoperability anymore and we can format the stick back to just work on macOS...

We just got the MacBook, i certainly don’t want to damage it now.

You definitely won't damage the MacBook, it's only about the integrity of the data on the USB stick. To make sure it works fine, I would recommend you to checksum all the data and verify the checksums after transfer. Or, to make it simpler, just zip everything into one big zip file and make a checksum of that file.

Thank you, was not aware of that - sounds like a great and safer option then?

The only drawback is that it's not free — these drivers cost money.

To be honest, the simplest and most "safe" solution would be jut to copy the files via the network. Unless of course they are not on the same network...

 

[James_C]

Uh, thank you very much for that information - sounds scary, not going to lie.
The files are *.avi clips form a medical system and *.jpg for a PowerPoint presentation.

Just so you are aware if you are new to Mac, that while .AVI is a common format on the PC. It is not on the Mac.

AVI is a multimedia container format—not a specific type of file, in which the audio and video are interleaved to maintain simultaneous playback.

Apple's Quicktime only recognizes AVI files that include Motion JPEG encoded video with PCM audio. Therefore, the playback of AVI through QuickTime on Mac or PC's will mostly depend on the type of compression (or codec) of the AVI itself.

To summarise your may be fine with the .AVI files and they may play ok on the Mac, but if they don't you will need to install a utility to be able to play them.

Either you may need to convert them into a format that Mac understands or use a Universal Media Player like
the VLC media player.

VLC player is a cross platform application that works for Windows, Mac OS X, Ubuntu, Android and iOS. It has its own built-in codec package which lets you play a plethora of media formats (avi, mkv, mp4, wmv, mpeg, webm, and require no conversion effort on the user's part. It also provides many features you won't find in QuickTime player such as recording online radio streams, adding logo watermark, capturing screen, and more.

It's open source and free to download. You can get the download link Mac version from VLC website http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

 

[AppleMango]

You definitely won't damage the MacBook, it's only about the integrity of the data on the USB stick. To make sure it works fine, I would recommend you to checksum all the data and verify the checksums after transfer. Or, to make it simpler, just zip everything into one big zip file and make a checksum of that file.




The only drawback is that it's not free — these drivers cost money.

To be honest, the simplest and most "safe" solution would be jut to copy the files via the network. Unless of course they are not on the same network...

Thank you very much for the further explanation!
We tried that today and it seems to work and the files are fine. Hopefully we will be done by the weekend and the one time is all we need.

Just so you are aware if you are new to Mac, that while .AVI is a common format on the PC. It is not on the Mac.

AVI is a multimedia container format—not a specific type of file, in which the audio and video are interleaved to maintain simultaneous playback.

Apple's Quicktime only recognizes AVI files that include Motion JPEG encoded video with PCM audio. Therefore, the playback of AVI through QuickTime on Mac or PC's will mostly depend on the type of compression (or codec) of the AVI itself.

To summarise your may be fine with the .AVI files and they may play ok on the Mac, but if they don't you will need to install a utility to be able to play them.

Either you may need to convert them into a format that Mac understands or use a Universal Media Player like
the VLC media player.

VLC player is a cross platform application that works for Windows, Mac OS X, Ubuntu, Android and iOS. It has its own built-in codec package which lets you play a plethora of media formats (avi, mkv, mp4, wmv, mpeg, webm, and require no conversion effort on the user's part. It also provides many features you won't find in QuickTime player such as recording online radio streams, adding logo watermark, capturing screen, and more.

It's open source and free to download. You can get the download link Mac version from VLC website http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

This is really useful and comes in handy, thank you!

So we collected the .AVI from the Windows-System, I put them onto the Macbook and I just a Converter to convert all of them into QUICKTIME-Format. We then added the video-files into Powerpoint and it seems to work well on both systems, so the moment we need them on the weekend should hopefully be without problems!

However, I still got my hands on that VLC, because that sounds just like an amazing addition to the new Macbook and since we are beginners with the macOS it surely helps to overcome some of those format-problems.

Thanks guys!

 

[cynics]

ExFAT is fine for copying files with a USB as long as the USB is ejected properly. Since you are a self proclaimed rookie always eject drives on MacOS, regardless of file system on the drive. Right click "Eject", Finder press eject icon, drag drop to trash (which will change to eject icon), etc.

Personally I've never had an issue with ExFAT on modern MacOS. I can't even force partition corruptions while purely under MacOS even if I try. This is removing the USB mid file transfer, several times.

IMG_6230.m4v is the file that was transferring when I pulled the USB. The file was corrupt (incomplete) but the partition is fine and useable. Maybe adding Windows to the mix causes the variables needed to see corruption more often?

However you may consider a network method for data transfer if the file size isn't too large. This avoids all the file system incompatibilities. For example I use iCloud Drive (Files) from iCloud.com if on Windows to "desktop" and its on my Macs desktop when I get home. But any cloud storage solution will probably work as long as it doesn't have a lossy compression for video (Google MIGHT not sure). You can probably zip it if lossy compression is a concern (again not sure if it is or isn't).

SSH, remote access from a NAS, etc are some options as well. Just transfer to your system/network at home from work.

Or just keep using exFAT/FAT32 if that doesn't bother you if FAT scares you NTFS will work in the direction you are transferring data.

Good luck