How to format USB 3.0 Drive to play media greater than 4 GB on TV

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How to format USB 3.0 Drive to play media greater than 4 GB on TV

Hello,

I am looking to find a way to format a USB drive to play media on my television. This problem seemed to occur when the update to El Capitan. I was always able to format the USB drive to play large files from 5-15 GB and play easily through my smart TVs. I am able to still format the drive to exFAT to allow for the larger file size, however, my TV does not recognize the drive and therefore am unable to play.

Is anyone else having this issue, or knows of a way to solve this issue? Thank you

Posted on Feb 10, 2016 7:45 AM

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Answer 1

Feb 10, 2016 10:34 AM in response to Ebanas

First of all you need to check the manual for your TV and see which formats it supports - if not ExFat then probably either NTFS, or Ext2?

If you used one of those then you had some third party software installed that likely is not compatible with El Capitan.

Macs cannot write to NTFS drives without extra software, and I believe the same is true for Ext2 and Ext3 (common formats in the Linux world and at least some Samsung smart TVs).

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Answer 2

Ebanas Author

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Feb 10, 2016 8:25 AM in response to Luis Sequeira1

This is in response to both. I honestly am not sure what formats my TV recognizes. I just know that as soon as I made my update to El Capitan months ago, I was not longer able to use my USB drives the same way. In the same fashion, a couple of my external hard drives also are not functioning the same. I am no longer able to add things to them as it is a read only. I would have to reformat the drive and lose 1.5 TB, which I am not willing to do. I have been hoping there would be some sort of patches to help this or perhaps a new OS in the future to fix this. I have been doing this with my TVs for years and never had an issue.

I have basically reformatted the USB drives to every option possible in the disk utility (OS X Extended, FAT and ExFAT). Although I am able to transfer the 5+ GB onto the OS X Extended and ExFAT, my TV no longer recognizes the format and won't pull up in the input.

Please note, both my TVs are Samsung Smart TVs. What extra software or fixes could be used that you are talking about?

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Answer 3

Feb 10, 2016 10:34 AM in response to Ebanas

Like I said previously, Macs can't write to NTFS drives without extra software, and that is NOT likely to change.

I cannot advise you on which product to use, but if you google for NTFS mac you will see a number of options.

You had one older version of one of these software options installed in your previous OS and you will need a new solution, compatible with EC.

There are paid solutions, and perhaps one or two free ones, but beware of any "solution" that requires disabling SIP (System Integrity Protection).

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Answer 4

JimmyCMPIT

Level 7

29,306 points

Feb 10, 2016 10:58 AM in response to Ebanas

If you can read, write and delete files on the NFTS device Texera is installed and working, if not you may need to update the software.

http://www.tuxera.com/mac/mac_manual.pdf

OS X will only read NTFS out of the box so if you can only read whats on there then there is a problem with the software. Your alternative would be to use FAT32 for Samsung TVs which Mac OS supports read, write and delete.

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Answer 5

Feb 10, 2016 7:49 AM in response to Ebanas

What format does your TV recognize if not ExFat? If the TV accepts ExFat format can you try formatting the drive ExFat using a Windows PC to see if that works.

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Answer 6

JimmyCMPIT

Level 7

29,306 points

Feb 10, 2016 8:44 AM in response to Ebanas

http://www.samsung.com/au/support/skp/faq/1077883

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Answer 7

Ebanas Author

Level 1

5 points

Feb 10, 2016 10:35 AM in response to Luis Sequeira1

Thank you for all the responses. It looks like I already have something on my computer with Tuxera NTFS. But I still do not know how to use them and make it work....

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