# The problem of having MAC when you have Windowsed friends



## aleshaloginov (Jun 28, 2014)

Good day everyone,
The problem is so stupid that I decided to create an account here to ask

I use a Transcend HDD because my MBP retina 15 has only 256 mb inside it — not quite enough to store important RAW files.
I converted it to ExFAT format, don't remember why but there are some serious profits.

The problem is when I connect my HDD to windows running computer, the system asks to check the HDD to prevent some errors, when I do that it actually erases half of my RAW files and only then allows to use it. (one can't overcome the checking, windows won't let you move something to your HDD)

I found some solutions, eg Stellar Phoenix Photo Recovery — brilliant thing, but I'm kind of tired of doing the same thing everytime, because it take 5 hours(at least) to restore 750GB HDD.

What's wrong with the HDD? Why windows sees RAW files as damaged ones?


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## CaiLeDao (Jun 28, 2014)

I think I would use NTFS as the file system, its more mainstream and you have a better chance of OSX and the USB drivers properly writing the file allocation records.

I am assuming you are using USB as the interface.


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## Valvebounce (Jun 28, 2014)

Hi aleshaloginov.
First welcome to the forum.
As Microsoft claim to have invented this file system and implemented it from vista, (so vista and all subsequent OS should be ok) would it be a windows XP system giving you the trouble? If so there is a fix patch out there to deal with adding compatibility for ExFat to XP, just google ExFat XP, or look at this link. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/955704
Hope this helps. 

Cheers Graham.


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## markmcleod (Jun 28, 2014)

Hi, I switched all my computers to Mac in the past 18 months and I had the same issue. Good news is problem solved! 
All windows hard drives use NTFS as standard. The problem is that this is a Microsoft format and so it is not used by Apple. Apple have the own format but then that doesn't work well with Windows. There are some formats that can work with both windows and Mac but if your friends have hard drives that are formatted for windows you again have issues if they try to plug their drives into your mac. 
The solution: Buy this piece of software for $20 and install it on your mac http://www.paragon-software.com/home/ntfs-mac/. Paragon software runs in the background of your mac permanently and lets you use windows (NTFS) hard drives without any issues. Then format your drive into the windows NTFS system (you can do this on your mac by going into settings then disk utility). *Make sure you back up everything before you do this as it will wipe your entire drive)*. I have this software on all my macs and have all external drives formatted to NTFS and everything works perfectly.
By the way, i have no affiliation with Paragon whatsoever. Good Luck.


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## aleshaloginov (Jun 28, 2014)

markmcleod said:


> Hi, I switched all my computers to Mac in the past 18 months and I had the same issue. Good news is problem solved!
> All windows hard drives use NTFS as standard. The problem is that this is a Microsoft format and so it is not used by Apple. Apple have the own format but then that doesn't work well with Windows. There are some formats that can work with both windows and Mac but if your friends have hard drives that are formatted for windows you again have issues if they try to plug their drives into your mac.
> The solution: Buy this piece of software for $20 and install it on your mac http://www.paragon-software.com/home/ntfs-mac/. Paragon software runs in the background of your mac permanently and lets you use windows (NTFS) hard drives without any issues. Then format your drive into the windows NTFS system (you can do this on your mac by going into settings then disk utility). *Make sure you back up everything before you do this as it will wipe your entire drive)*. I have this software on all my macs and have all external drives formatted to NTFS and everything works perfectly.
> By the way, i have no affiliation with Paragon whatsoever. Good Luck.



Thank you very much!


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## aleshaloginov (Jun 28, 2014)

Oh, and no, I don't have any affiliation with Stellar Phoenix Photo Recovery application, but still if you LOST all your RAW files the way I did many times — use it, it's really worth buying.


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## Ruined (Jun 28, 2014)

aleshaloginov said:


> Good day everyone,
> The problem is so stupid that I decided to create an account here to ask
> 
> I use a Transcend HDD because my MBP retina 15 has only 256 mb inside it — not quite enough to store important RAW files.
> ...



Sounds like one of two things:
1) Whatever program format the hard drive in exFat did it incorrectly.
2) You are not dismounting the drive correctly prior to disconnecting it.


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## aleshaloginov (Jun 28, 2014)

Ruined said:


> aleshaloginov said:
> 
> 
> > Good day everyone,
> ...



The formatting was done with built in mac os application, it never seemed to be bad... And no, I always use the correct way of disconnecting my HDD 

Thanks!


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## markmcleod (Jun 29, 2014)

No worries, this works very well for me.


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## dgatwood (Jul 2, 2014)

If it is reproducible:

http://bugreporter.apple.com/


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## eersoy (Jul 2, 2014)

I also had some problems with Mac formatted Exfat drives but now I format the drives to ExFat on windows machines and use them on both platforms without a problem. I think the issues mainly caused by is not the ExFat but the partition map (GUID, MBR...) thing.

Regards
Efe


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## viggen61 (Jul 2, 2014)

aleshaloginov said:


> Good day everyone,
> The problem is so stupid that I decided to create an account here to ask
> 
> I use a Transcend HDD because my MBP retina 15 has only 256 mb inside it — not quite enough to store important RAW files.
> ...



ExFAT is not supported directly in some versions of Windows. Your Windows friends might need to install an updater from Microsoft. I know that Windows XP requires an update to support exFAT, but Windows 7 (and presumably later versions) do not.

Macs can read from, but not write to NTFS (last I heard).

Why do you need to connect to a Windows machine? If we know why, we may be able to recommend a safer course of action. One suggestion, if you're only sharing a few files, would be to burn to a DVD or CD which have universal file formats.


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## Atonegro (Jul 2, 2014)

As said before, Paragon ntfs is an excelent program that let you read and write ntfs-disks on a mac.
And there is a similar program to read mac-disks on a windows computer, and that is Macdrive.

http://www.mediafour.com/products/macdrive/downloads

But there is nothing wrong with exfat, I am using it most of the time when transfering data between mac and windows. (and linux)
The reason windows screws up repairing the exfatdisk is the different way the rubbish-bin is inplemented.
So *never* let windows repair the disk, tell it to shut up and get to work, and it will do its job.

Fat-32 can be used too, almost any computer will read and write it.


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## mdmphoto (Jul 2, 2014)

Format your drive as ex-fat; this is what we teach our students in Lightroom lab and they move their usb drive catalogs from their home macs to the lab's pc workstations with nary a problem. Some random websites with ex-fat info:

http://lifehacker.com/5927185/use-the-exfat-file-system-and-never-format-your-external-drive-again

http://www.tech-recipes.com/rx/9879/os-x-how-can-i-access-exfat-drives-with-my-apple-computer/

https://code.google.com/p/exfat/


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## viggen61 (Jul 2, 2014)

Atonegro said:


> Fat-32 can be used too, almost any computer will read and write it.



True. However, recent implementations of Apple's Disk Utility won't give you that option, at least for some disk types. I know it won't give you that option for large USB thumb drives...


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## Atonegro (Jul 3, 2014)

viggen61 said:


> Atonegro said:
> 
> 
> > Fat-32 can be used too, almost any computer will read and write it.
> ...



That is very true.
It is great for small files and disks, but because it is 32 bit, it can not handle files above 4gb and no disks above 2tb, that is why exfat is the better option.


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## dgatwood (Jul 7, 2014)

I would suggest a LAN-connected disk instead of a hard drive for these purposes. That way, A. all the machines can access it at the same time, and B. you don't have to deal with nonstandard filesystem kernel extensions on either platform.

In particular, I'm remembering a tragic OS X upgrade cycle where thousands of a particular model of Seagate hard drive started eating themselves, and it turned out to be caused by the fact that instead of reformatting the drives as HFS+ like they should have, Seagate instead had all of their users install Paragon's NTFS filesystem kext so that the Macs would let users write to NTFS volumes. Unfortunately for their customers, Paragon's NTFS code had bugs that didn't show up until Apple did a major OS upgrade, at which point users frequently lost a significant amount of data, IIRC. Seems like that was 10.7 or so, but I'm not certain.

So I definitely would *not* suggest Paragon. I would never in a million years count on a third-party filesystem kext in OS X to be robust enough for consumer use, particularly if you're finding that even Apple's built-in filesystems aren't robust for you. Writing filesystem code is hard. Writing filesystem code correctly is even harder. Writing filesystem code *that supports a Microsoft-designed filesystem by reverse engineering parts of Windows against Microsoft's wishes* is borderline suicidal.

Get a tiny NAS box that supports SMB. In the long run, you'll be a lot happier. Or just keep a small FAT partition around for when you need to exchange a few files between platforms. Either way, don't try to use HFS+ on Windows, and don't try to use NTFS on OS X. Those paths lead only to madness.


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## CS (Jul 8, 2014)

From my experience dual booting Linux and Windows, I find it is always a good idea to run a disk check in Windows on any NTFS partition formatted by a non-Windows OS. It need only be done once, before anything is put on it. But it must be done since Windows always finds errors during that first check. The quick version of the disk check is sufficient for this case.

ExFAT, being another Microsoft scheme, might have the same issue. If you want an ExFAT partition, either format it in Windows or run a disk check under Windows before using it.


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## sagittariansrock (Jul 30, 2014)

I will second the idea of the Paragon software, however I did not buy it as a standalone. I am not even sure all hard drives will work with it.
I always use Seagate HDDs that *COME* with the software driver. All you have to do is install the software (free!) on your Mac and it will work with all NTFS-formatted Seagate HDDs. Probably with all NTFS HDDs whether Seagate or not- but I haven't bought a non-Seagate one to find out (especially, the hard way)


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