iPad Pro 11 not reading my external hard drive formatted in exFAT. iPad is up to date on 14.6, hard drive is new and works on PC. How do we fix this? How do we format to a confirmed format the iPadOS will read?
Is the drive formatted with a single partition and NOT multiple partitions?
Single partition
formatted on Windows though…would that make a difference though? ExFAT should be exFAT regardless
Ya know.
I have been having a little argument with one other regular contributor here, for awhile, about whether external drives being used with iPads need to be formatted with a Mac or PC and in theory, it should not make any difference, but, in practice, Apple and Microsoft maybe have slightly different drive formatting code that make using a Windows PC problematic for formatting external drives to be used with any Apple devices or computers.
I have seen in the past that formatting external drives for use with iPad does NOT work, most times, when formatting such drives, using a Windows PC.
You may need to seek out someone you know with a Mac to help you reformat that drive using a Mac
OR
You need to search online for your nearest, “local” Apple store location and call contact phone numbers and call to make an appointment to have that external drive reformatted using a Mac, instead.
The same drive formats apply.
Mac native drive formats, Fat 32 or Ex Fat, should still all apply.
Yeah tha’ts what I’m beginning to realize. This supposedly “make your life easier” aspect of iPadOS has become a major pain. I’ve tried this Windows program called Paragon that is supposed to read/write APFS but that doesn’t work either. So far the only solution seems to be get a Mac somehow and format on there. If you see anything else or find an alternative that actually works please let me know :-). Thanks
iPad Pro 11 (2020) not reading exFAT hard drive
