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Windows doesn't see FAT USB drive formatted in OS X El Capitan

So, I've searched all over for a solution to this issue, but it appears as though no one has had the issue, or perhaps has figured out the solution. So, I have two Mac computers. One is used as a media server (My Mac Mini) and the other is my commuter laptop, MacBook Pro. I just installed Windows 7 on my MacBook Pro and while the installation was going I downloaded the Boot Camp drivers for the MacBook Pro on my Mac Mini, which I later was going to put on a thumb drive and take to the laptop to install the drivers.


So I went into "Disk Utility"... which is a completely different look, now that I have El Capitan installed, and formatted my 8 GB USB Thumb drive with the FAT system. I then uploaded my Boot Camp drivers (for the MacBook Pro) onto the thumb drive then went over to my laptop and inserted the usb drive. Immediately, Windows 7 pops up saying, "Format disk?" because it evidently couldn't recognize the file system.


I've done everything I can think of to fix this... I even switched to other USB Thumb drives, but each time, Windows doesn't recognize the FAT file system on the thumb drive after being formatted by the Disk Utility app. I tried to format the thumb drives in NTFS, but Windows will only recognize 200 mb of the USB thumb drives. Somehow, after Disk Utility formats the thumb drive with FAT, Windows 7 won't recognize ANY of the file structure except for the 200 mb of reserved space on the thumb drive.


Does anyone know how to fix this? I ended up finding a new thumb drive still in the package that hadn't been touched by the Disk Utility app, and was able to load the Boot Camp files onto it. Wouldn't you know, Windows recognized it right away! So it appears to me, there's something wrong happening when Disk Utility is trying to format the system structure of the drive. Perhaps a bug? Thoughts? Help? lol

MacBook Pro, OS X El Capitan (10.11)

Posted on Oct 8, 2015 5:30 PM

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Windows doesn't see FAT USB drive formatted in OS X El Capitan

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