I have been given a flash drive that I can't read with my Mac-mini.
it's formatted as a MS-DOS FAT16.
Is there anything I can do to read it.MS-D
[Re-Titled by Moderator]
Mac mini, macOS 10.15
Try a different USB port? If you have access to another machine, preferably Windows, check if it’s readable there too.
Reformat the media. FAT gets corrupted fairly commonly, and Microsoft didn’t publish any specs until way too late which means formatting disagreements do arise.
Sulla2014 wrote:
It is not a matter of reformatting the media given that it can be mounted from a Windows 7 system and the device can still save files to the card without error. Further, reformatting the card would erase the data that I was trying to retrieve.
Retrieve the data on Windows then, reformat the media, reload the data, and test the transfer again.
Or if this is local data transfer, configure an SMB share on Windows or Mac, mount that, and skip the media.
It makes no difference if an alternative port is used. It makes not difference if the storage card is reformatted. This is an issue since one of the version 13 upgrades to macOS and it is a problem being experienced by others.
Advising users to reformat the storage device potentially sacrificing data for no valid reason is really inappropriate when the issue lies in macOS.
Sulla2014 wrote:
It makes no difference if an alternative port is used. It makes not difference if the storage card is reformatted. This is an issue since one of the version 13 upgrades to macOS and it is a problem being experienced by others.
Advising users to reformat the storage device is really inappropriate when the issue lies in macOS.
Send feedback to Apple: Product Feedback - Apple
Set up an SMB share or use NTFS for the transfer, pending any potential future fix from Apple.
Or use FAT32 or ExFAT.
Assuming this is a problem with macOS, and not the usual problems that arise with FAT across various systems and devices, that is.
Having written FAT12, FAT16, and FAT28/FAT32 file system processing for a vendor, it’s a truly terrible file system format.
macOS no longer seems to be able to mount storage cards formatted in FAT16. The Mac will detect the device without issue but Finder will not mount the device file system. The storage card was shown to be fine by mounting it via the same device and USB cable on an old Windows 7 system.
It is not a matter of reformatting the media given that it can be mounted from a Windows 7 system and the device can still save files to the card without error. Further, reformatting the card would erase the data that I was trying to retrieve.
macOS supports the common FAT formats including FAT12. FAT16, and FAT32, which can mean there’s a problem with the flash drive itself, with the connection, or with the flash drive format.
I already have a solution. The comments are for others that are being advised to re-format storage devices potentially losing files they want to access for no valid reason.
How to access and read MS-DOS FAT16 drive on my Mac mini
