Mac/PC interface problems with pen drives

Lt Major Burns

Lt Major Burns

"Dicky" Charlteston-Burns
i have a lovelly tiny little 256mb pen drive, which i have used for years. no i'm starting to use both macs and pcs, it's become useless as both OS's want to format it instead of read it

Macs and PCs both read the same cds regardless of where they are burnt but this little pen drive confuses both - i can put files onto there, on both formats, but it's just when i get to the destination, the OS's want to format it

Any thoughts?
 
On your PC, put the thumb drive in, and right click it in an explorer window. Go to preferances. Format the drive as FAT32. Usually the problem is that windows likes to take control and format things as NAFT, a file systsm than os x can not read. The shuffle over-comes this by coming fat32 from the factory. good luck.
 
DanTekGeek said:
...Usually the problem is that windows likes to take control and format things as NAFT,...
Click to expand...

You sure about this???

I was always under the impression it was NTFS. :p
 
shh you.
It was late, and I knew what I had it wrong. I dont know why, but It totally slipped my mind. Anyway, yes, NTFS
 
DanTekGeek said:
shh you.
It was late, and I knew what I had it wrong. I dont know why, but It totally slipped my mind. Anyway, yes, NTFS
Click to expand...

::ha:: ::ha:: ::ha::

I know what that's like...

Although sometimes it seems as though it continues throughout the day for me. :p
 
I've got a thumbdrive (SanDisk Cruzer Mini 128MB) and a Lexar JumpDrive Trio USB media reader. With both of them, they work flawlessly in Windows (95 and 98 require a driver, 2000/XP don't) and on OS 9. But on OS X, they're inconsistent.

Most frequently, I'll plug them into the USB ports (front or back) of the G5 towers at work, and they'll light up, but OS X 10.3.2 and 10.3.6 never recognizes or mounts them. I have to reboot the G5 with the drive plugged in for the Mac to recognize it, and then it refuses to eject the drive -- no error message, the drive just stays on the desktop forever, regardless of what I can do to try to dismount it (namely, cmd-e and dragging to the trash). I usually just pull the drive and get a warning that I'm supposed to eject them first.

Less frequently, the drive never apparently gets power at all -- the lights never come on. This led me to believe that the ports might be faulty, except that every G5 in this building and at my old college does it. Boot the same machines into 9.2.2 and the drives work flawlessly, every time.

Aside from this, I have a Creative Zen Micro. In removable disk mode -- which again works flawlessly under Windows and OS 9 without drivers -- the disk locks up while copying anything onto or from it. The Zen freezes in transfer mode, and Finder needs a hard restart.

What gives? I've Googled to find other people with this problem for weeks and haven't found anything. I've formatted the Cruzer as FAT32, and the memory card as FAT32, NTFS and HFS+. Same problem every time.
 
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