Reformatting External Hardrive to NTFS?

Read the user manual for your TV. It should state what can be plugged into a USB port, the supported drive formatting, maximum drive size, and what type of audio or video files are supported.

The NTFS filesystem is Windows specific and Apple's Disk Utility does not provide that format option. Instead, use exFAT which is supported on Windows and Mac — if it is among the supported formats in the previous paragraph, or use FAT32 if it is not.

Try erasing the drive again as ExFAT, but make sure the partition scheme is Master Boot Record.

I make this suggestion because our Sony Blu-ray player can read FAT32, ExFAT and NTFS, but if the scheme is GUID, it doesn't recognize anything. Master Boot Record is the only one that works.

shyann100 wrote:

Thanks for your reply!!

I found and read a user manual about the soniq tv which states the usb formats that are compatible are NTFS and FAT32 - which would be an easy fix, However.. when I format my hardrive to Fat32 (which for some reason is listed as “MC-DOS (FAT)” on my MacBook) and I then proceed to put movie files on it, it will only allow me to put on a total of 12 movie files before it states any other files “.. can’t be copied because it is too large for the volumes format.” 😅

FAT32 can't handle individual files larger than 4 GB. Some implementations of FAT32 can't handle volume sizes greater than 32 GB, at least not if they're the implementations doing the formatting.

That's why there's exFAT – to handle larger files and larger volumes.

This also accounts for the difference between SDHC and SDXC memory cards.

• SDHC ones hold "more than 2 GB, up to 32 GB" and cameras expect them to be formatted using FAT32.
• SDXC ones hold "more than 32 GB, up to 2 TB" and cameras expect them to be formatted using exFAT.

https://osxfuse.github.io/ lets you write to NTFS on a Mac. ExFAT is read/write on Macs as well, and might also be supported by your TV for mroe files. Disk Utility supports ExFAT.

FAT32 is the old MS-DOS formatting, for a day when all computing was 32 bit.

NTFS and ExFAT were formed for higher bit level computing, and higher than 4 GB.

Macs have supported ExFAT since 2009. And Windows PCs offer that as a formatting option.

If a manufacturer chooses to ignore it, that's their problem. Contact the TV manufacturer and tell them they are 15 years behind the compatibility curve.

Running Windows on a Mac, and Connecting … - Apple Community

For all we know the TV manufacturer may offer a firmware update that adds ExFAT.

For more details about the differences, see this article:

https://www.easeus.com/computer-instruction/does-exfat-work-on-mac-and-pc.html