Recently, I plugged in a NT drive after installing Paragon NT for Mac. Paragon sees the disk but can't mount it It turns out that Macs are only able to work with certain allocation unit size. For example, if I plug in a exfat drive that uses the allocation unit of 4096 bytes, it won't mount. I had to change the allocation unit to 128K for the drive to mount. Any ideas?
Thanks,
I have formatted exfat on the apple side to make them compatible. However, it would be nice to have some documentation on what the limitations are. I notice that the issue occur when the disk size is large. For example, I have no problems with thumb drives, but a 5TB exfat could not be mounted until you change the unit allocation size to 128K. I have even tried a smaller size like 64K, but 128K is apparently the min.
For NTFS I have ask Paragon. Again, it appears to be an issue with large disk size.
Thanks,
I have formatted exfat on the apple side to make them compatible. However, it would be nice to have some documentation on what the limitations are. I notice that the issue occur when the disk size is large. For example, I have no problems with thumb drives, but a 5TB exfat could not be mounted until you change the unit allocation size to 128K. I have even tried a smaller size like 64K, but 128K is apparently the min.
For NTFS I have ask Paragon. Again, it appears to be an issue with large disk size.
No Paragon software is the version that I downloaded as a trial. I plan to pay for it if it test out to be working. Out of the three I have tried to test:
https://www.hcc-embedded.com/products/fat-file-systems/exfat
Usually it is recommened to format exFAT (GUID) on the Mac although I have had no trouble with exFAT disks formatted with the Windows 10 default.
About NTFS, I'd ask Paragon support.
I have had no trouble with the few NTFS disks on Intel Macs (i.e. read-only with Mac's built-in support) but AFAIR M1 Macs have had some issues with them.
Did the " Paragon " software come bundled with the external Drive. If yes, normally that version of Paragon is a modified version to work only with the Manufacturer drive. May need the full version directly from the Developer of Paragon
One other thing. I have notice that write performance from Mac to exFat is just plain terrible compare to Mac to NTFS using Paragon and from windows to exfat, so I am considering sticking with NTFS as a file format for exchange between window and Mac.
Thanks, I am aware of what exfat is, but is trying to figure out specifics. Basically Mac can't read exfat if they are not formatted with a specific allocation unit size and I want to know what that is.
I done a few experimenting. Most of the drive seems to mount properly including ones as large as 1 Tb. What appears to be an issue is that when you have a large volume, the issue with unit allocation rears its ugly head. I actually have very few 5 Tb drives, so it was just bad luck that the first one I tried was a 5 Tb.
May I ask why exFAT is not good enough? Is NTFS more robust or is there some Windows issue that needs it?
[oh, you just answered that]
Allocation Unit size and Mac OS
