Hardware :: File Disappearing / No Icon On FAT32 External Drive?
Dec 29, 2008
While using my MacBook to access an external drive which is formatted Fat32, I attempted to slightly alter the name of a file with a particularly long file name. Once I changed the name, the file extension was cropped, and the file became inaccessible. Now I can see that the file is there (with no extension at the end of the name), but if I click on it or highlight it, it just disappears, and when visible, in place of the file icon there is just a dashed line box. The file is also visible with Terminal, but if I try to take any action Terminal reports that there is "no such file or directory."
I tried DiskUtility, DiskWarrior and File Buddy but apparently they don't work too well with the Fat32 format. I also tried repairing permissions, restarting the computer, disconnecting and reconnecting the hard drive, and also rebuilding the desktop (?) using alt-command on startup...all to no avail. It's clear what happened: I screwed up - I should have reformatted the drive before I put any files on it, right? But now, I just want my file back. I know it's there. I can see it, and I'm afraid to alter the drive in any way until I can access this file.
When ever I copy some files or create a file in my external USB drive which is a FAT32 one. file permissions are not preserved. All files/folders has 777 are permission. Is this how it work in mac or am I missing something?
I'm going to buy my first Macbook this weekend and I'm trying to get myself ready so that I don't have to waste precious playing time on stuff like this I have an external hard drive filled with music, videos and files. I would like to keep using my drive on my mac to access my files and save backups etc. The hard drive is in NTFS format and from what I understand the mac will be able to read but not write to it - which isn't what I want. Ideally I don't want to lose the content on the drive, but if I have to I could slowly copy it all onto dvds. If possible I also want the drive to be compatible with Windows so I can plug it into parents/friends/uni's computers and still be able to view/add content on rare occasions. What format should the drive be and how do I do that? (I think I can manage to do it once someone points me in the right direction)
I just bout this Western Digital External Hard drive, Passport SE. Anyways, I formatted it to MS-DOS (FAT) so I can use on mac and/or windows. One of the other main reasons I bought it was so I could use it to watch videos on my Xbox 360.
Now I've seen tutorials online with windows how to re-format it to FAT32 so it works properly on xbox 360 but cannot figure it out on mac? On some of the tutorials they use certain programs to do it, is there something like that for mac I can download? Is fat32 and fat the same? I know there has to be a way for me to be able to format it to FAT32 using mac.
i'd like to format my lacie external hard drive with two partitions:
1. HFS+ partition as a bootable clone of my internal drive
2. FAT32 partition readable by any windows (and mac) machine
i'm creating my partitions with disk utility, but i hit a snag when choosing a partition scheme...apparently i cannot choose a different scheme for each partition.
so when i format the drive with GUID, the FAT32 partition is not even recognized by windows XP. but when i format the drive with master boot record (MBR), the HFS+ partition is not bootable...
I have an external hard drive that I was previously using on PC, having attempted to use it on a Mac, it will not write to it. I've found that I have to format to FAT32, which I think i can just about manage (yes, im a girl) but my concern is, if i format through the MAC, will i then lose what's on the hard disk as the tab says 'erase'? I have a lot of images on the hard disk so am a little petrified! Any advice for this really basic question would be appreciated!
I am in need of a data recovery app that can recover data off a Fat32 drive and save the recovered data to a NTFS drive (I use NTFS-3G). I have PhotoRec but can't seem to navigate to my NTFS external to save the data (the only drive big enough to save the data too is my girlfriend's 500GB external and it is NTFS).
Any tips to getting photorec to navigate to the drive (I am pulling from one external to another). Photorec sees the one I want to save too I just can't get it to select it. Also if there are any other programs yall recommend, I will give them a shot.
Sorry if this is in the wrong place, its my first post here..
I used to use my HP external drive for time machine, but since i got a new bigger WD one to use with time machine i have wiped the HP using disk utility but it is still showing up on the desktop with a time machine icon. i think i can still use it like a normal hard drive but it is causing a bit of confusion and its really irritating!! is there any way that i can change it back? i've tried wiping it a few more times but it still won't work..
I was wondering if there is a small file size limit to the FAT32 file system. I recently picked up a 1TB WD external with Firewire (pre-formatted FAT32) and have been transferring movies and such fine, but I just tried transferring an HD movie (5GB) and some large .dmg's/.iso's and they all just fail with an error.
Is this a size limitation, and will i need to reformat the drive to fix it, or is there something else I'm missing?
I have an extra internal hard drive (Maxtor) on my Apple Mac.
Recently, I have noticed that the icon on the desktop that represents Maxtor only remains on the desktop for a period of 2-3 days then disappears. I then have to manually restore it but any files saved on it are lost.
Fortunately I do not use this Maxtor drive for saving files to much but I would still like to know how to solve this problem.
How do you "unhide" icons on the dock? Why does my Firefox icon keep disappearing? What is equilvalent to My Computer?I have had no luck with the "Help"..Trying not to be overwhelmed. I haven't found much on the Apple website.
I currently have a macbook which I've had since December. A problem has now occurred, my screen keeps randomly disappearing after the first time it done it the mac took 3 or 4 minutes to show the screen again then when it loaded up again there was no icon for the HD folder. Any ideas what is causing this and how to get it fixed? Is it the hard drive? That's what I maybe thought.
I formated a new 1.5TB WD hard drive, using the eSATA cable - in the FAT32 format so I can use it on my PC as well. (It was formatted on the MAC)
I was working on the Hard Drive via eSATA and the express card. Then the Hard Drive was accidentally unplugged. Subsequently, my MacBook Pro didn't like that and gave the warning message to properly eject ... too late! I restarted the MAC and it still won't recognize it - I've tried eSATA, USB, firewire- and nothing. The hard drive was all 3 connections. So, I tested the HD on a friend's MacBook Pro and the hard drive is recognized without any hesitation and it works fine. So, there is nothing wrong with the Hard Drive - its my MacBook that won't recognize it.
The HD won't even show up in disk utility of my MAC. I've restarted many many times and I've tried every port available.
we just purchased a WD Elements 250Gb external hard drive for our eMac PowerPC G4 running 10.4.11. We bought the hard drive as our computer keeps popping up with a message saying "Start up disc out of memory" or something to that effect.When we plug the external hard drive in, the blue light appears on it but the icon does not pop up on the desktop to be able to drag stuff onto it. We have tried unplugging and replugging and we have tried rebooting the computer with the hard drive still attached.
I'm trying to put a custom icon on my external drive, I've tried different graphics, different file sizes and formats, etc. and this is all I can get out of it. I'm probably missing something obvious but I've tried everything I can think of, and a MRoogle search turned up nothing.
I am using this guide to get a new HD into my PS3: [URL:...] It says that the HD I back my PS3 up to needs to be formatted to FAT32. I have an external HD that I use with my mac, its partitioned into 4 parts. I have one partition which I don't use which I want to back my PS3 onto. In Disk Utility I select that partition and I only get 4 option under the Erase tab, 4 different Mac OS Extended options.
I have a macbook pro with an external harddrive formatted to MS-DOS FAT32 and want it to accept files bigger then 4gb (ie. HD Movies). Is there a way to change the individual movie files to be accepted by the Harddrive or do I have to reformat the harddrive completely?
If I do have to reformat my harddrive what format should i do so?
I want my external harddrive to be able to work on Windows and MacOS as well as accept files of any size (ie. over 4gb at least)
My external hard disk icon has been pretty temperamental. It's plugged in and sometimes the icon shows up and I mainly use it to back-up everything on my computer.Sometimes when I plug or unplug on either side it miraculously shows up and it's fine. I just got a new computer and my consultant told me to back up everything on my old computer to the external drive.However, now, the icon doesn't want to show up so I can do this. I've unplugged, replugged, restarted, etc.
I was using my external hard drive with my mac and its formatted in the MAC HF(something like that) file system. I would like to format that external hard drive such that the file system is either NTFS or FAT32 so that I can use it on my windows partition running on boot camp. I am asking this question since I am planning to get a new HD for my mac and use the old one with windows.
Simply looking for an application, preferably free, that will allow me to write to my NTFS external HD. I had this external as FAT32 before which was not problematic until I started downloading 720 and 1080 .mkv movies that were larger than 4gb. So I reformatted to NTFS which will accept files larger than 4gb but realized that OSX don't be got the ability to write to NTFS.
I am trying to reformat a 500 GB USB HDD to one FAT32 partition so that I can use it on a Mac and a PC. I have seen many references to using the disk utitilty and creating a partition in MS-DOS format, but my computer does not have that option. The only four options I have are Mac OS Extended, Mac OS Extended (Journaled), Unix and Free Partition. Am I missing something here?
Probably about 10 years ago I was a big techie with DOS and all that, and now I seem to have forgotten how to do anything!
Two questions.
i) My iMac, which I bought last year has run out of HDD space. What can I do to extend it? I really can't work out what I have filled it up with as I have only
8.5gb in my applications folder 4.7gb in the systems folder 9.1 GB in the libary 40.18GB in the users bit (of which 32gb is music on iTunes)
Other than the standard applications I have a DOS emulator, Office and Spore.
But apparently I have used 200gb?!?!? I can't find where this disk space is being used up. Any ideas on what I can check to clear this out? I put a partition in to possibly install windows, how do I check that's been removed correctly?
Also if I plug in a USB drive to extend the memory how can I get the mac running as if this was actually the normal drive for this computer?
And question ii)
I have a PS3 which I want to back up my info on, but its on a FAT32 format. Can I format a USB HDD in FAT32 using my Mac?
I was playing around with the desktop icons and changed the USB external drive icon. I would like to get back the original orange USB icon. I can't seem to find it on the iMac. Where is it stored so I may copy it?
I'm using an external drive through FireWire 400 on my MacBook Pro with 10.5.5. It's a 320GB with 22GB in "free space" and the rest formatted with HFS+ (used as a Time Machine backup drive). I want to setup that 22GB as a FAT32 partition to be writable in both Windows and Mac. Normally, it sounds like I'm supposed to use Disk Utility on Mac and just choose MS-DOS(FAT). Unfortunately, that choice is not presented. I can choose four different Mac-based file systems, but not FAT. Why doesn't that show up as a choice? I've tried leaving it as free space and using a PC to format it. I've tried formatting it as a Mac-based drive and using the PC to format. I've even tried installing MacDrive on the PC and using that to format it as FAT32.
I have updated to OSX.7.4 but but now my external hard drive icons have disappeared from my desktop? The disks are recognized in disk utility and the "show external disks" is ticked in Finder Prefs. Disk Utility did show some errors in 2 or 3 of the disks which have been corrected. It is just since updating to the latest version of Lion this has happened. They are linked via eSATA cables and are in two Sonnet containers (4 hard drives in each). CF cards show up OK. My back up Chronosync, fails to run as it does not recognise the disks.
