Freshly formatted ExFat HDD can't be used?? WHY!?

Question

Freshly formatted ExFat HDD can't be used?? WHY!?

So I bought a new external hdd yesterday. Asked for a Mac and Windows compatible one, and she recommended a Maxtor 1TB 2.5" 3.0 usb external hard drive. It was obvuoisly a complete lie as it was a NTFS formatted, so I had to spend 10 hours formatting it to ExFat.

Problem is, after that I still can't seem to use it on my mac. I can see it in the Disc Utility, but the hdd itself is greyed out. Also it sais the HDD is full, - it's dead empty. I've tried the first aid - completes in about a second and sais everything is fine. I 've tried mounting it, which makes the hdd blink for a few seconds and then nothing happens. So what the heck is wrong?

When i formatted the hdd I selected a allocated byte size of 8mb is that causing any issues?

TL DR: Why is my hdd greyed out and what can I do? (Don't want to change format)

Posted on Jan 21, 2018 6:22 AM

Reply

Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

ACreativeEndeavor Author

Level 1

15 points

Jan 21, 2018 9:28 AM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

Thank you for your reply,

It might have something to do with the cluster size, but I just managed to get it to work by formating the drive again on Mac instead of Windows. It probably sets it to the right amount by default.

I was afraid it would take the whole day again but it was done in a matter of seconds. And yes, I was doing a secure erase before, so that's probably why it took so **** long. Silly me ;P

Reply

Answer 2

y_p_w

Level 6

17,762 points

Jan 21, 2018 9:29 AM in response to ACreativeEndeavor

Maybe this?

exFAT mounting problem

Ok,I resolved the issue.

When formatting a exFAT drive under Windows you can choose the cluster size. If the drive should be used with OSX you should not choose anything higher than 1024!

Reply

Answer 3

Jan 21, 2018 9:29 AM in response to ACreativeEndeavor

I had to spend 10 hours formatting it to ExFat.

It takes under three minutes to initialize a properly-working drive to ExFAT format, unless you choose Security Erase, and deliberately choose to write over the (already blank) data blocks. If you made that choice, however long it took is based on your choice, not a defect in MacOS.

If yours took 10 hours without security erase, that drive is dead-on-arrival.

Reply