I have an external volume (an SSD by Sandisk connected via a usb-c cable) rated at 1TB. Finder (macOS 14.5) says the disk is full (when I try to add a file it errors with: **No space left on device (28)** however when I look at the sizes of the directories on the external volume, of which there are two, one is called Movies and the other TV, the sizes do not add up at ALL: adding these two folder sizes adds up to a little over 700GB and nowhere near the 1000GB used as claimed by "Get Info" in Finder on the volume. Now I realize there could be hidden directories that are trouble so I looked at those using Cmd+Shift+. as you can see in the following screenshot: The only directory (of those hidden) that has more than 10MB is .Spotlight-V100 as can be seen here: Maybe the size on disk here is actually much larger than reported? To get to the bottom of things I also approached it from a different angle and ran the du and ncdu utilities in the terminal, the output of which is again attached here: These outputs lead me to believe the sizes of Movies and TV can be more or less trusted, however for .Spotlight-V100 and .Trashes unfortunately there seems to be no or wrong info for a permission issue. I am out of my knowledge here - maybe this is an exFAT specific problem? Should I try delete the Spotlight directory as a first step? Any help much appreciated! :) Also if anybody needs any more data, just comment. One last image of the info output from disk utility:

I'm trying to create a small FAT32 partition which I can use to transfer files between my Macintosh HD partition and the Windows Bootcamp partition on my Mac. I'm using Big Sur. I've gone to Disk Utility and clicked 'partition' when 'Fusion Drive' is selected on the left. This is the screen I get: When FAT32 or ExFat is selected as the new partition format, I am unable to change the size of the volume. It's stuck at 360GB, and I only want 1GB. I don't want to play around with this without understanding it, because it's dangerous. Does anyone know what I need to do to be able to create a smaller partition? EDIT: My model of mac: iMac 2019. Output of diskutil list:

/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *1.0 TB     disk0
   1:                        EFI ⁨EFI⁩                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                 Apple_APFS ⁨Container disk2⁩         878.0 GB   disk0s2
   3:       Microsoft Basic Data ⁨BOOTCAMP⁩                122.0 GB   disk0s3

/dev/disk1 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *28.0 GB    disk1
   1:                        EFI ⁨EFI⁩                     314.6 MB   disk1s1
   2:                 Apple_APFS ⁨Container disk2⁩         27.6 GB    disk1s2

/dev/disk2 (synthesized):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      APFS Container Scheme -                      +905.6 GB   disk2
                                 Physical Stores disk1s2, disk0s2
   1:                APFS Volume ⁨Macintosh HD⁩            18.5 GB    disk2s1
   2:              APFS Snapshot ⁨com.apple.os.update-...⁩ 18.5 GB    disk2s1s1
   3:                APFS Volume ⁨Macintosh HD - Data⁩     520.7 GB   disk2s2
   4:                APFS Volume ⁨Preboot⁩                 397.5 MB   disk2s3
   5:                APFS Volume ⁨Recovery⁩                626.4 MB   disk2s4
   6:                APFS Volume ⁨VM⁩                      2.1 GB     disk2s5

/dev/disk3 (external, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:     FDisk_partition_scheme                        *1.0 TB     disk3
   1:               Windows_NTFS ⁨TOSHIBA NEW⁩             1.0 TB     disk3s1

I am trying to copy data from an external NTFS drive to an exFAT drive. However, some files are greyed out and give me this error when I try to copy them: > One or more items in “IMGP0029.AVI” can’t be changed because they are in use. Even after clicking Continue and typing my password, it doesn't copy. Following this answer I tried to run SetFile -c "" -t "" path/to/file.mov but I get: > ERROR: Write Permissions Error. (-61) on file: /Volumes/Seagate Backup Plus Drive/IMGP0029.AVI Running sudo chmod 777 gives me: > chmod: Unable to change file mode on /Volumes/Seagate Backup Plus Drive/IMGP0029.AVI: Read-only file system Where do I go from here?

I have a 64 GB USB-C flash stick from Samsung that was new in October 2024, which I formatted with a tool from my car's manufacturer that it insisted on. Making it a ExFAT volume that contains map updates and optionally media like MP3s. I had success reading it in the car, and success adding media to it using the Mac when I was on MacOS 14 Sonoma. Now I insert it on my updated MacBook running MacOS 15 Sequoia, and it just doesn't mount. It shows up in Disk Utility and as disk4 with disk4s1. Isn't ExFAT supported and shouldn't it work? I'll show you what I tried so far, and I wonder if there's something else I should try. Here's what the terminal says about mounting it read only:

dlamblin ~ % diskutil mount disk4s1
Volume on disk4s1 failed to mount
If you think the volume is supported but damaged, try the "readOnly" option
dlamblin ~ % diskutil mount readOnly disk4s1
Volume on disk4s1 failed to mount
If you think the volume is supported but damaged, try the "readOnly" option

Prepending sudo doesn't change the output to either of these. And perhaps you want to see what it says in Disk Utility: Oh, and First Aid complains about permissions, but the terminal version of diskutil doesn't behave any better with sudo permissions. E.G. with sudo:

dlamblin ~ % sudo diskutil mountDisk readOnly disk4
Volume(s) mounted successfully
dlamblin ~ % df -h
Filesystem        Size    Used   Avail Capacity iused ifree %iused  Mounted on
/dev/disk3s1s1   460Gi    10Gi   324Gi     4%    412k  3.4G    0%   /
devfs            208Ki   208Ki     0Bi   100%     720     0  100%   /dev
/dev/disk3s6     460Gi    15Gi   324Gi     5%      15  3.4G    0%   /System/Volumes/VM
/dev/disk3s2     460Gi   6.4Gi   324Gi     2%    1.2k  3.4G    0%   /System/Volumes/Preboot
/dev/disk3s4     460Gi   2.2Mi   324Gi     1%      51  3.4G    0%   /System/Volumes/Update
/dev/disk2s2     500Mi   6.0Mi   481Mi     2%       1  4.9M    0%   /System/Volumes/xarts
/dev/disk2s1     500Mi   5.4Mi   481Mi     2%      33  4.9M    0%   /System/Volumes/iSCPreboot
/dev/disk2s3     500Mi   2.7Mi   481Mi     1%      85  4.9M    0%   /System/Volumes/Hardware
/dev/disk3s5     460Gi   102Gi   324Gi    24%    1.0M  3.4G    0%   /System/Volumes/Data
map auto_home      0Bi     0Bi     0Bi   100%       0     0     -   /System/Volumes/Data/home
/dev/disk3s7     460Gi   2.0Gi   324Gi     1%    139k  3.4G    0%   /nix
/dev/disk3s3     460Gi   986Mi   324Gi     1%      38  3.4G    0%   /Volumes/Recovery
dlamblin ~ % sudo diskutil verifyDisk disk4s1
A whole disk must be specified
dlamblin ~ % sudo diskutil repairDisk disk4s1
A whole disk must be specified
dlamblin ~ % sudo diskutil verifyDisk disk4
Unable to verify this whole disk: A GUID Partition Table (GPT) partitioning scheme is required (-69773)
dlamblin@ ~ % sudo diskutil repairDisk disk4
Unable to repair this whole disk: A GUID Partition Table (GPT) partitioning scheme is required (-69773)

Maybe it's MBR partitioned now? But again, it worked before. Was there some MBR support I forgot I added to Sonoma that I should add or enable? **Updates per comment requests**: Again, kindly note that I can read the contents of this USB stick in my car, and on a Windows machine. I can modify them if I like. I cannot mount it at all on my MacBook Pro 16 Nov 2023 with Sequoia 15.3.1.

➜  ~ sudo fsck_exfat -q /dev/disk4s1
QUICKCHECK ONLY; FILESYSTEM CLEAN
➜  ~ sudo fsck_exfat -d -n /dev/disk4s1
** Checking volume.
** Checking main boot region.
125313091 total sectors; 512 bytes per sector
FAT starts at sector 2048; size 3840 sectors
489480 clusters starting at sector 6144; 131072 bytes per cluster
Root directory starts at cluster 4
Read      offset = 0x000000100000  length = 0x001000
** Checking system files.
Read      offset = 0x000000340000  length = 0x020000
Found active bitmap; first cluster 2, length 61185
** Checking upper case translation table.
Read      offset = 0x000000320000  length = 0x020000
Found upcase table; starting cluster 3, length 5836
** Checking file system hierarchy.
Directory /
Directory /System Volume Information
File      /.lge.upgrade.xml.enc
Directory /HU
Directory /whatsnew
File      /2023_GV60_USA.ver
File      /$TXRAJNL.DAT
Read      offset = 0x000000360000  length = 0x020000
File      /System Volume Information/WPSettings.dat
File      /System Volume Information/IndexerVolumeGuid
Read      offset = 0x0000003c0000  length = 0x020000
Directory /HU/images
Directory /HU/firmware
Read      offset = 0x000242c80000  length = 0x020000
File      /whatsnew/whatsnew.tar.gz.enc
Read      offset = 0x0000003e0000  length = 0x020000
File      /HU/images/coconut-rootfs.tar.gz.enc
File      /HU/images/coconut-vr_NAM.tar.gz.enc
File      /HU/images/A_gos2-fs_20_qnx.img.enc
File      /HU/images/kernel-update-CLU.tar.gz.enc
File      /HU/images/kernel-update.tar.gz.enc
File      /HU/images/kernel-updater.enc
File      /HU/images/navi_NAM.md5_.enc
File      /HU/images/navi_NAM.tar.gz
File      /HU/images/nav_NAM_JW.sign
Read      offset = 0x000000400000  length = 0x020000
File      /HU/firmware/update.tar.gz.enc
** Checking active bitmap.
Checking bitmap cluster 2
Read      offset = 0x000000300000  length = 0x020000
0 clusters were marked used, but not referenced
0 clusters were marked used and CLUST_BAD
0 clusters were marked free, but referenced
** Rechecking main boot region.
** Rechecking alternate boot region.
** The volume  appears to be OK.
➜  ~ sudo fsck_exfat -y /dev/disk4s1
fsck_exfat: Opened /dev/rdisk4s1 read-only
** Checking volume.
** Checking main boot region.
** Checking system files.
** Checking upper case translation table.
** Checking file system hierarchy.
** Checking active bitmap.
** Rechecking main boot region.
** Rechecking alternate boot region.
** The volume  appears to be OK.
➜  ~ sudo diskutil mount disk4s1
Volume on disk4s1 failed to mount
If you think the volume is supported but damaged, try the "readOnly" option
➜  ~

~ sudo fdisk /dev/disk4
Disk: /dev/disk4	geometry: 7800/255/63 [125313283 sectors]
Signature: 0xAA55
         Starting       Ending
 #: id  cyl  hd sec -  cyl  hd sec [     start -       size]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
 1: 07    0   3   4 - 1023 254  63 [       192 -  125313091] HPFS/QNX/AUX
 2: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [         0 -          0] unused      
 3: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [         0 -          0] unused      
 4: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [         0 -          0] unused

I also tried a different mount command; confused that I got a permissions bases error.

➜  ~ sudo mkdir -p /Volumes/samsung; sudo mount_exfat /dev/disk4s1 /Volumes/samsung
mount_exfat: /dev/disk4s1 on /Volumes/samsung: Operation not permitted
➜  ~ sudo rmdir /Volumes/samsung

Is there any disk encryption scheme or format that can be used on both macos _and_ linux? Linux cannot read Apple's drive encryption format, and LUKS is not supported on MacOS. I tried using VeraCrypt encrypted partitions in exFat format and it mounted successfully several times on MacOS but after a system update exFat mounting of veracrypt volumes does not work anymore (no issues on linux). Also, exFat does not seem to be a reliable file system, so I searched for alternatives, but apart from **fat32**, **exFat** and **ntfs** I don't see any viable alternatives for a reliable cross-platform file system. All of these formats have issues: **fat32** has file size limits, **exfat** veracrypt partitions are not mountable on macos, and **ntfs** is proprietary, linux support is not reliable, and veracrypt does not support it on linux/mac. hfsplus works fine on mac but is read-only on linux (probably worth mentioning that you can disable HFS+ journalling and allow writing on linux). I hoped to be able to use ext3/ext4 with veracrypt encryption but even though I have fuse with ext4fuse working in read-only mode working for unencrypted drives veracrypt is apparently not able to interoperate with fuse drivers. Fat32 would be a great option since it works well with veracrypt on any OS, but the file size limitation and lack of symlinks is simply not acceptable. Any other options I might have missed?

I’m encountering an issue when uploading files from an external hard drive formatted as ExFAT. For every file I upload through **Google Chrome**, a second file with the same name is created, prefixed with ._ and with a size of 4KB. **Here’s the key detail:** The ._ files are not visible on the external drive before the upload (I have enabled hidden files visibility to check this). They only appear after the files are uploaded. **My understanding so far:** I know that macOS creates ._ files to store metadata (like resource forks or Finder attributes) on file systems that don’t natively support macOS metadata, such as ExFAT. However, in this case, I am not copying these metadata files manually, and they don’t seem to exist on the drive before the upload process starts. **My question:** Why are these ._ files being created during the upload process if they are not visible nor selected beforehand on the drive? **Additional context:** - My external drive is formatted as ExFAT for compatibility with both macOS and Windows. The files being uploaded do not seem to have any special Finder attributes, tags, or custom icons (at least as far as I can tell). - When I upload files to Google Drive using Google Chrome, either by dragging them from a Finder window to the drop area in the browser or by using the "+ New > Folder upload" option in the Google Drive web interface, a second file with the same name is automatically created for each uploaded file. These additional files are prefixed with ._ and have a size of 4KB. I’d appreciate any insights into why this might happen and practical steps to resolve or prevent it!

As the title says, I have an old Mac running 10.13 (High Sierra) with an 16TB external drive formatted to ExFat that serves as my main "backup" drive for every computer in my home. Some background: I used to have a 5TB drive (formatted as HFS+) for this and everything (i.e. all the scenarios listed below that aren't working on the new drive) worked flawlessly. But space was running low so I wanted to upgrade to a newer one. Given that my Mac is also pretty old, I wanted the new drive formatted in ExFat so when the Mac dies I could then, and only then, swap it to a newer PC. The issues: On the Mac, I can copy the files to the new drive using Beyond Compare and my cloud backup service seems to have no problem seeing the new files and even thinks they match with the existing backup set so it doesn't try to upload them again. This is great. But on all my Windows machines that connect it, things started to not work with the new drive. Chrome can't save downloads to it and gives a completely unspecified error. I can't manually add files to the drive. Let's say I connect to the drive and open up an existing folder. I can see files in there. But if I right-click and choose New -> Rich Text Document, Windows immediately says "Unable to create file 'foo'. There is not enough space on the disk." Winamp can no longer scan the folders on the new drive (I can't find any errors). There are other oddities but these are the main ones for me. Like I said above, all of these scenarios work fine when connecting to the older HFS+ drive from my Windows machines but not the new ExFat drive. And I can do everything on the Mac with no issues (at least with Chrome downloads and creating files). I have tried connecting to the drive via

\\\

and trying to share individual folders on the drive. Same results. It looks to be how the Mac is opening connections to Windows but I don't know what the fix is, if any. Any ideas here would be appreciated. But I'm keen on keeping the backup drive on the Mac as long as that machine is working. EDIT: As asked, here is the screenshot of my "Sharing & permissions" section of my drive info. I looked into this message before I even asked this question here and it seems like this is a normal message for ExFat since OSX doesn't have any ability to assign permissions on that type of partition (at least that was my understanding).

I am in the process of migrating from Windows to Mac. To transfer all my files from an old Windows laptop to a new Macbook I am using an external SSD (formatted as exFAT). I copied all my files to the external SSD and when I plug that drive in the Macbook many files are missing, not showing up on the drive. If I go back and connect the drive to the Windows laptop, I can verify that the files are *really* on the external drive. I narrowed it down to files that have special characters in their filename. For example Ö (LATIN CAPITAL LETTER O WITH DIAERESIS ) Looks like MacOS refuses to recognise the existence of these files. I found that MacOS treats Unicode a bit differently than others by doing Unicode Decomposition, although I am not sure if this is what causing the inability to even see the files on the drive. How can I work around this problem? Any help is appreciated. ---------- **Update** Checking the folders on the external SSD via Terminal confirms the non-existence of the files with special characters. I double checked again on Windows, the files exist.

% ls -la
total 4096
drwxrwxrwx  1   staff  1048576 Dec 20 10:12 .
drwxrwxrwx  1   staff  1048576 Dec 21 11:52 ..

This also doesn't return any files:

la -laH

Checking the disk usage:

du -h

This returns 1.0M. On Windows I can see 15 files in this folder, around 11.5M in total. The files are also not corrupt and can be opened.

I recently went through some French language training for work. As part of that, I gathered a lot of worksheets, grammar reference PDFs and other related files that have french accents (é, à, ç, ô, etc.) in their filename. I'm trying to copy those files from my work Windows computer to my personal Mac to continue my training and for long term retention. I've copied them from the work Windows PC onto a USB stick (formatted as exFAT), but when I try to copy from that USB stick to my Mac, the copy fails with error -43. Here's some of the troubleshooting steps I've taken already: 1. I can't even see the files with the accents in their filenames when I look at the directory in the Finder on my Mac. However, I've confirmed that the file is there in the directory by plugging the same stick back into a Windows computer. I can also see the files in the directory if I use Terminal and look at the directory contents with

-la

2. I tried using Disk Utility to image the stick and it is the same result with the image as it is with the stick. Files can be seen with Terminal but not in the Finder and the copy fails. 3. I tried using Terminal's

-R

to copy the directory, and while the copy doesn't fail, it does throw and error and the files with the accents in their names are not in the resulting copy. Any advice on how to fix this other than manually going file by file and removing the accents (which is completely impractical due to the number of files I would have to do this on)? Surely this must be fixable. I've searched Google and not found a solution. I even tried asking ChatGPT 4o and the solutions it gave me were not helpful.

I have a Western Digital MyBook (25EE) 8TB External Drive. It is formatted with exFAT. I can't recall exactly how it was formatted, but I believe it was done with Synology's DiskStation for my Synology NAS. I am able to mount and read the drive when I connect it to the NAS, but not on *macOS Sierra 10.12.6*. The drive shows up in Disk Utility, but mounting does nothing. I have run "First Aid" with no errors. Disk Utility incorrectly thinks that the usage is 8/8 TB. As can be seen in the screenshot below, usage is around 4.2/8 TB. The drive mainly contains a Synology HyperBackup file (.hbk) which makes up almost single-handedly all of those 4.2 TB. According to Synology DiskStation, the main partition is exFAT and I think the EFI partition is vfat: The drive also shows up in diskutil as disk2s2 but I can't mount it: > /dev/disk2 (external, physical): > #: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER > 0: GUID_partition_scheme *8.0 TB disk2 > 1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk2s1 > 2: Microsoft Basic Data WD My Book 8.0 TB disk2s2 > > $ mount disk2s2 > mount: disk2s2: unknown special file or file system. > > $ diskutil mountDisk disk2 > One or more volume(s) failed to mount NB: (I tried following these instructions for FUSE for macOS, but I suppose they're not really relevant since exFAT should be supported natively in macOS these days.) I don't have the faintest idea where to start on this issue – what could be the problem here? --- ## Edit 1: Block Sizes *macOS:* > $ diskutil info disk2 | grep "Block Size" > Device Block Size: 512 Bytes > > $ diskutil info disk2s1 | grep "Block Size" > Device Block Size: 512 Bytes > > $ diskutil info disk2s2 | grep "Block Size" > Device Block Size: 512 Bytes *Synology SSH:* Used fdisk -l. Notice the GPT PMBR size mismatch – maybe it has some relevance? > GPT PMBR size mismatch (4294967294 != 2743150591) will be corrected by w(rite). > Disk /dev/sdq: 7.3 TiB, 8001562869760 bytes, 15628052480 sectors > Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes > Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes > I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes > Disklabel type: gpt > > Device Start End Sectors Size Type > /dev/sdq1 40 409639 409600 200M EFI System > /dev/sdq2 411648 15628050431 15627638784 7.3T Microsoft basic data --- ## Edit 2: GPT > $ sudo gpt -r show disk2 > > start size index contents > 0 1 PMBR > 1 1 Pri GPT header > 2 32 Pri GPT table > 34 6 > 40 409600 1 GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93E#### > 409640 2008 > 411648 15627638784 2 GPT part - EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B726#### > 15628050432 2015 > 15628052447 32 Sec GPT table > 15628052479 1 Sec GPT header --- ## Edit 3: Mounting EFI Apparently macOS is able to mount and Finder list the contents of the EFI. > $ diskutil mountDisk disk2 > One or more volume(s) failed to mount The volume that fails to mount is the primary exFAT volume. macOS requires the EFI volume to be unmounted or it will complain about not properly ejecting disks.

I'm trying to copy a film project from external drive A (formatted with ExFAT) to external drive B (formatted with APFS). This always results in an error message saying: "the item "name" can't be copied because there isn't enough free space". However, I have now formatted the external drive B multiple times and it's completely empty. I am assuming that this is happening as I'm trying to copy files from ExFAT to APFS. If this is the case, how can I then do that?

I have an Extreme PRO 64GB SanDisk memory card for my Canon camera. In macOS I can view the pictures I took, but not the videos. They just don't show up in the Finder window but I *can* watch them on the camera. How can I access the videos?

Ext HDD is 3,5" 4TB WD RED (exFAT) in USB 2.0 box with external power supply (220v) When I restart my Mac Mini (late 2012, MacOS 10.14) in 90% the boot will end on black screen (no apple loading logo, no progress bar). When I turn off or disconnect my ext HDD (exFAT), or reset PRAM then the system will boot perfectly. Then I can reconnect my extHDD and everything will work (till next restart).

I have an ExFAT drive which carries my works, including codes that I'll be using between Mac and Windows. I've always used TUI GNU Emacs on this drive to ensure no resource fork is accidentally created. Recently, I re-installed the entire operating system to eliminate a problem with [Native Instruments](https://native-instruments.com) softwares that I didn't manage to find the cause. Since then, whenever I create or modify a file on the ExFAT drive from iTerm2 command line, resource fork for that file gets created. I tried the Apple Terminal, it won't create resource fork even for the exact same commands I've typed on iTerm2. How should I prevent resource fork from being created by iTerm2 in this case? **Update** Thanks for the answer from @Tetsujin (刺青人?), But I insist on finding the problem with iTerm2. This ExFAT drive is primarily for coding and exchanging data with other computers (Win, Linux, BSDs, whatever other lesser known OSs.) Lacking ACL and permissions is considered a plus for my purposes. Also, my creativity works are on another APFS drive to get backed up in Time Machine, so no worry they get harassed by a foreign OS.

I have read questions here about exFat and its performance on the Mac. I think I can refute the previous answers and am therefore still looking for an answer or solution. But from the beginning: **My setup:** - A Western Digital Elements 5TB as external hard drive. - MacBook Pro 2021 - Windows laptop (>5 years old) - 3.5TB data stored on a NAS **Scenario 1 (Mac on exFat):** I have formatted the external drive with the Mac as exFat. I try to copy the data from the NAS to the external hard drive. After approx. 6 hours of running time, another **9 days** are assumed. Only a relatively small amount of data was copied, so the remaining 9 days would probably have been needed. The activity LED on the hard disk also shows very long pauses. This seemed very suspicious to me. **Scenario 2 (Windows on exFat):** The previous data is deleted (not reformatted). I start the copying process. The prognosis is 9 to 10 hours under Windows. I abort after a few hours. A significant part of the data is copied which makes the prediction of 9 to 10 hours seem realistic. The activity LED on the hard disk flashes continuously. **Scenario 3 (Mac on APFS):** I format the external hard disk with the Mac and start the copying process. Forecast: approx. 9 hours remaining time. The activity LED on the hard disk flashes continuously. **Conclusions:** exFat may have its optimisations for SSDs. But it is possible to write to the same disk with the same cable and the same data under Windows significantly faster. (Scenario 1+2) It is not due to the external hard drive or the additionally required adapter from USB-A to USB-C on the Mac. The hard disk can also be written to with the Mac in 9 hours (Scenario 3). Hence the question again: - Why is exFAT so slow on the Mac? - What can I do to make the disk usable for a Windows PC? **Update 2022-01-10:** Here is a small update of my further investigations **Test 1:** Copy 1 file 39.76GB APFS 5m 54s exFAT 5m 50s **Test 2:** Copy 13 files 138,92GB APFS 21m 09s exFAT 21m 32s **Test 3:** Copy 1.31 TB APFS 3h 29m 50s exFAT 3h 30m 45s *Up to this point, both file systems look about equally fast.* **Test 4:** Copy entire 3,5TB APFS 15 hours (stopped here) only 486GB on external hard drive The point is completely illogical to me. Here, significantly less was copied than in the previous test with 1.31TB and in a significantly longer time. This means that the speed was slower from the beginning. **Test 5:** Copy entire 3.5TB with Paragon NTFS driver: approx. 9h 30m Conclusion: The file systems are about the same speed for small amounts of data (<1.31TB). But something happens between 1.31TB and 3.5TB. Since the tests are very time-consuming and it is quite difficult to time the copying, I would like to stop my tests at this point. The tip with Paragon fits perfectly in my case.

I bought two 2TB 2.5" external HDDs that came with the following warning message in a Readme file contained in the drives. *"The drive can only be formatted with Exfat and cannot be formatted in other for mats, suchas NTFS, FAT32, FAT. Otherwise it will cause the hard drive t be unusable! This hard disk is only suitable for windows system and XP system not suitable for PS4, xbox macbook,tv, etc. The disk needs to be inserted into the USB interface of the device's motherboard. If the transfer method is used, there may be insufficient power supply to the disk."* Both drives appeared to work straight out of the box. However, I got errors when trying to partition them (I use a MBP, mid-2015 Retina, MacOS 10.3.3). Now one of the external drives has become unusable. So...I'm guessing this could be because these are cheap no-brand drives which I ordered from China, similar to these: - https://www.amazon.com/Womdee-External-Drive-Portable-Compact/dp/B0832PLGLZ?th=1 - https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/223984609481 - https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/373049736464 And I'm guessing the manufacturer has assembled them or configured them in this way (limited to Exfat) in order to cut costs. My questions are: 1. Why/how an external drive can be manufactured to be permanently only Exfat? 2. Is this a hardware constraint or physical limitation imposed by the manufacturer or by the USB to SATA bridge used? 3. Is there a way to overcome this so that I can use them for Time Machine backups?...Has anyone been succesful in backing up with Time Machine on these types of 2.5" external hard drives? **Attempts at finding answers:** My investigation so far has brought me to this: https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/150702/182479 (which hints that it could be related to the controller of the external case) From the Terminal query below, it appears that the drive is a JMicron device. I've now got in touch with JMicron and waiting to hear back (will post updates here). In the meantime, if anyone can shed any light and answer/respond to any of the above questions I'd very much appreciate it. diskutil info /dev/disk1:

Device Identifier:        disk1
   Device Node:              /dev/disk1
   Part of Whole:            disk1
   Device / Media Name:      JMicron Generic Media

   Volume Name:              Not applicable (no file system)

   Mounted:                  Not applicable (no file system)

   File System:              None

   Content (IOContent):      FDisk_partition_scheme
   OS Can Be Installed:      No
   Media Type:               Generic
   Protocol:                 USB
   SMART Status:             Not Supported

   Total Size:               2.0 TB (2000398934016 Bytes) (exactly 3907029168 512-Byte-Units)
   Volume Free Space:        Not applicable (no file system)
   Device Block Size:        512 Bytes

   Read-Only Media:          No
   Read-Only Volume:         Not applicable (no file system)
   Ejectable:                Yes

   Whole:                    Yes
   Internal:                 No
   OS 9 Drivers:             No
   Low Level Format:         Not supported

Below is a screenshot showing the readme file and the warning contained in it. NB. Question asked earlier to try and restore the unusable drive here https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/391754/unusable-2-5-external-hdd-partition-failed-with-the-error-69760-unable-to-wr) .

On Windows 10 it's working perfectly without any errors. On macOS I'm able to see it in Disk Utility, I also ran healing, but I'm still not able to mount it. Tried various apps/drivers including Mountain, Pegasus, Hasleo and nothing worked. Tried to kill fsck and also bunch of other commands and nothing worked. Very desperate and disappointed. My 5 year old Android phone can mount it without problems.

When I copy data from my MacBook Pro (M1) to my external drive *(HDD USB 3.0 - exFAT)* it is slow *(60 MByte/sec)*. When I copy the same data from a Windows PC on that drive, I reached a much better performance *(120MByte/sec)*. Is there a way to improve the exFAT performance on Mac? I disabled Spotlight search on external drives, but this does nothing. I have a second external drive, formated in MacOsExtended with no performance issues. But for the other drive I need exFat to transfer Backup data.

I can open an external hard drive with a windows computer but not with my MacBook Pro. About my MBP: - OS: Monterey 12.5.1 (21G83) - Hardware: MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2018) - Processor: 2.9 GHz 6-Core Intel Core i9 - Memory: 32 GB 2400 MHz DDR4 About the external drive: - USB Connection (NOT type-c) - 5TB - partitions: Just one volume with one folder at root path, but a lot of small folders and files in that folder I have googled some articles, but most of them are telling me how to format/erase the disk. Is there any way I can do that? I only need to read the files.

Just finished a copy of an external drive (exFAT) to another drive (HFS) using standard the Finder's Cmd+C, as I want to format the first drive (exFAT) to HFS. Now, I've been trying to verify all the copied files using -diff and -rsync for several hours, but for some reason, Finder has printed a "._" on all of the files on the exFAT drive, but excluded that on the destination drive. So naturally, both commands will tell me that all files differ, when they're actually the same in every other aspect. So, is there a way, maybe a certain flag or something, that lets me use either the diff command or dry rsync command to display any differences **apart** from that "._" added to the file names. For instance, I used md5 on two files, and their checksum's identical, even though their names differ.