Formatting flash drive for in-store photo printer

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Formatting flash drive for in-store photo printer

How does a flash drive need to be formatted to take jpegs from a Mac to an in-store photo printer?

Using Disk Utility’s Erase (reformat), I’ve tried MS-DOS and Mac Extended. Neither of these work in any of several brands of store machines I’ve tried.

The flash drive has nothing else on it, and it seems to be the directory that the store machines don’t recognize, not the jpegs. They all just say there’s nothing on the drive. None of the store people were familiar with this.

When I use an SD card to take jpegs to the store, I format the card with my camera and then copy the jpegs from the Mac onto the card. This works. But I’d like to be able to use a flash drive.

Thanks for any help with this.

MBP 2.4 ghz, 4gb, Mac OS X (10.5.8), Ordinary flash drives, 1 and 4 gb

Posted on Mar 30, 2010 12:39 PM

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Answer 1

Mar 30, 2010 12:50 PM in response to LongRiver

LongRiver wrote:
How does a flash drive need to be formatted to take jpegs from a Mac to an in-store photo printer?

Using Disk Utility’s Erase (reformat), I’ve tried MS-DOS and Mac Extended. Neither of these work in any of several brands of store machines I’ve tried.

You probably need to use Disk Utility's Partition tab set the "Partition Map Scheme" to "Master Boot Record", then format the volume as "MS-DOS". Select the device (not the volume), select the "Partition" tab, change "Volume Scheme" from "Current" to "1 Partition", then click on the "Options" button and select "Master Boot Record".

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Answer 2

LongRiver Author

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Mar 30, 2010 1:33 PM in response to William-Boyd-Jr

Thanks.

I've tried that just now, and took it to a store. It didn't work.

Maybe this is beyond what a Mac can do? This seems surprising, since a Mac reads SD cards formatted by cameras and read by store printers.

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Answer 3

Lyssa

Level 8

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Mar 30, 2010 2:52 PM in response to LongRiver

Did you follow William's steps exactly?

~Lyssa

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Answer 4

Mar 30, 2010 2:54 PM in response to LongRiver

LongRiver wrote:
Maybe this is beyond what a Mac can do?

It shouldn't be. At the risk of repeating yourself, you might use Disk Utility to check the settings one more time:

- Select the device: "Partition Map Scheme" should read "Master Boot Record"
- Select the volume: "Format" should read "MS-DOS (FAT32)"

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Answer 5

LongRiver Author

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Mar 30, 2010 3:03 PM in response to William-Boyd-Jr

Yes, I did it exactly.

I'll do it again. Even more exactly.

Thank you.

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Answer 6

Mar 30, 2010 7:17 PM in response to LongRiver

LongRiver wrote:
Yes, I did it exactly.

I'll do it again. Even more exactly.

If that doesn't fix the problem, I have no more suggestions.

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Answer 7

Lyssa

Level 8

41,405 points

Mar 30, 2010 7:27 PM in response to LongRiver

Like William, I'm pretty much out of ideas.

The only other thing that comes to mind is the hidden files that OS X will place on any drive; these few hidden files may be causing the machine to completely ignore all other files on the drive.

You can use the application TinkerTool to show or hide hidden files.

~Lyssa

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Answer 8

LongRiver Author

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Mar 30, 2010 8:01 PM in response to Lyssa

Thanks for all these good suggestions. Much appreciated.

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