I-Stick Memory stick not read on G5 iMac

[xuratoth]

Hi there,

My first day as a Mac owner. My first Mac post. Be gentle!

I was trying to use my USB memory stick (128Mb Intelligent-Stick) on my new 1.6Ghz G5 iMac.

The FAQ at PQI, makers of the I stick states:

Q2: Do I need any drivers for my MAC OS 10.X?

Answer: No driver needed for MAC OS 10.X.

However, the iMac does not like it one bit: it threw up some message about the drive being formatted using the wrong filesystem. WinXP-SP2 reports the stick as being FAT32 format. Is this not a supported format under OSX? I find this surprising as even my "minority OS", eComstation (OEM version of OS/2), has FAt32 support built in?

If FAT32 is not acceptable, what filesystem could I format the stick as that would be readable under both OSX and XP? Thanks for your help. (I just know it's going to be FAT16... yuk!)

Or is it just me? Could be!!!

PS. Loving the iMac!

[lurk]

Fat32 should work just fine. It works for me. Are you sure that it is fat32 and not NTFS? If possible try to fort it on your Mac as a MSDOS device (that should be fat32) and try it again. Something might have been messed up but remember that reformatting will erase everything on it.

[Jmassey79]

I have a few memory sticks. One formatted with fat 32(for win) one with mac extended. and the fat 16 formatted shuffle(for use with everything). I know this is a bit much but with what I work on this gives me 256 win and mac and the nice thing here is they support long file names.... anyway after rambing on for awhile you will see that my point is that for use on all systems we still seem to be stuck with fat 16. Someone may have a better answer but I would just go ahead and format it to 16.... ew i know but it works

[xuratoth]

Originally Posted by lurk

Fat32 should work just fine. It works for me. Are you sure that it is fat32 and not NTFS?

Positive. XP reports it as such, and eCS does not come with NTFS out of the box (although it's available), so it would not have been able to read it if it were NTFS.

Most odd.

Thanks for the replies.

[Robn Kester]

Have you tried reformating it as FAT32 for kicks to see what happens?

I've got a USB flash drive at home and never even put a thought into its format. I just plugged it in and it popped up on the desktop. Maybe when I get home I will format it to see what happens. OOC.

[xuratoth]

I just thought that I ought to close this long dormant thread, and apologise to Robn Kester for not saying thanks - I tried your suggestion, formatted the drive as FAT32 under WinXP, and lo and behold, the Mac reads/writes to it now, no problem.