17 replies to this topic

[DauntlessK]

While not really related to MWO... BUT since I always get great help from my mechwarrior brethren, I thought i'd ask here. I plugged my flash drive into my new PC and am unable to get it to recognize the device... (It says it installs the driver the first time I plugged it in).

I've tried going into disk management and assigning it a different drive letter. When I try a popup shows up giving me a "can't do this because your console view is not up to date" BS... It says try refreshing it, which I have, or shut it and/or restart computer. All of which I have tried but do not work.

I have another USB external hard drive which works fine, no problems. Does the drive need to be reformatted I'm wondering? How would I go about doing that if so?

Thanks for the help. as always the MW community is the best! (Unless you're one of the ones begging for a beta key.... haha)

Edited by DauntlessK, 17 August 2012 - 10:33 AM.

[JFlash49]

1. It might need to be reformatted.
(To format your flash drive)
-Insert it
-wait for it appear in my computer (unless you named it something else).
-right click on it with your mouse and scroll down through the pop up menu until you see format.
- click format and the system would automatically detect the present format of the device so you dont need it to change it..just
proceed to clicking format
-wait
-Then voila!!! its formatted

2.Did anything happen to it because it might be damaged,i've had several unexplained flash drive damages.If its damaged, you can either get a new one, or pay some cash to try and get it fixed...i wouldnt recommend doing the latter because it could only be a temporary fix

Edited by JFlash49, 17 August 2012 - 11:04 AM.

[DauntlessK]

JFlash49, on 17 August 2012 - 11:02 AM, said:

1. It might need to be reformatted.
(To format your flash drive)
-Insert it
-wait for it appear in my computer (unless you named it something else).
-right click on it with your mouse and scroll down through the pop up menu until you see format.
- click format and the system would automatically detect the present format of the device so you dont need it to change it..just
proceed to clicking format
-wait
-Then voila!!! its formatted

2.Did anything happen to it because it might be damaged,i've had several unexplained flash drive damages.If its damaged, you can either get a new one, or pay some cash to try and get it fixed...i wouldnt recommend doing the latter because it could only be a temporary fix

No it won't appear under my computer. It shows under disk management but it won't let me change drive letter. The drive works just fine on my mac. (Thats what I use my flash drive and my [dying] external hard drive... moving things between the two) So usually i'll download something or get something on the mac and then move it to the PC. So I can put it back in the mac and no probelms, everything is fine there.

[JFlash49]

Oh the drive letter cant be changed that way. You get different drive letters when you use different USB slots. try putting it in a highspeed slot around the back.

[DauntlessK]

JFlash49, on 17 August 2012 - 11:16 AM, said:

Oh the drive letter cant be changed that way. You get different drive letters when you use different USB slots. try putting it in a highspeed slot around the back.

Also tried one of those unsuccessfully. How can it download the driver and recognize its a sony usb and then not let me use it!? ugh

[JFlash49]

hmm.. i'm stumped as what to do next...
it recognizes and installs it successful but wont allow access. aah. i need another members input. 2 heads are better than one.

[DauntlessK]

I'm wondering, I know very little of formatting drives but I know of at least two ways to format it. I am pretty sure one way makes it only mac-exclusive. Maybe it somehow got formatted that way... Perhaps I should try reformatting it on the mac... but i'm not sure if / how to set it so that it works on a PC as well.. (is there a simple selection of how to format it?... if so, what is the name?)

[JFlash49]

Im not so familiar with mac systems but, im guessing, if by some means you can format it to fat32 it can be used on both systems. I assume its already formatted as such which is why you could use it on both systems

Edited by JFlash49, 17 August 2012 - 11:45 AM.

[DauntlessK]

I KNOW i've used the flash drive for my xbox. So when I bought a hard drive for that thing (gosh hard drives everywhere) I didn't need it anymore so reformatted on the mac and may have changed the setting or whatever. Maybe that's where it got messed up. Would it still recognize the device as I described if its not formatted for windows??

(I'm currently at work now so I can't try to reformat it now)

[IceWeasel]

yes. your mac im sure changed its fomat type to Mac specific. apple pulls that kind of crap all the time. check your format options on you Mac

[JFlash49]

If its not formatted for windows. To the best of my knowledge it wont be recognized.
Apple tends to not make it compatible with Windows stuff..

[mechnut450]

mac and windows both have their own format design and don't work well to gether most thetime , I thinkg ther ean open source type software that might work but I am not sure since I don't own a mac system.
Also check under the disk mangament to see if the drive is mounted in windows ( this would give you the letter part ) I had to mount a harddrive from another computer to get it to be readable under windows 7 so I could scan it for a virus and it was a pain in the rump.

[DauntlessK]

While on the subject, i have two other questions.

1) Is there any sort of limitation that doesn't allow .ISOs to be put into a drive? Sure I can mount them and move the files but sometimes it isn't what I want to do... (for example any game that works for both systems, aka my girlfriends love of sims3... when i mount that it will only give me the unwanted mac files... unless i open it with some sort of program like zipeg but that doesn't work sometimes...)

2) Is there any way around the 4 GB limit imposed on fat32? Seems like a really low, horrible limit that needs to be fixed...

[ultra1437]

DauntlessK, on 17 August 2012 - 11:07 AM, said:

The drive works just fine on my mac.

This is probably it right there. Macs use their own filesystem type for flash memory, if i'm remembering right. Windows doesn't play well with it.

Another said it before i did:

mechnut450, on 17 August 2012 - 12:03 PM, said:

mac and windows both have their own format design and don't work well to gether most thetime , I thinkg ther ean open source type software that might work but I am not sure since I don't own a mac system.
Also check under the disk mangament to see if the drive is mounted in windows ( this would give you the letter part ) I had to mount a harddrive from another computer to get it to be readable under windows 7 so I could scan it for a virus and it was a pain in the rump.

---

DauntlessK, on 17 August 2012 - 12:08 PM, said:

While on the subject, i have two other questions.

1) Is there any sort of limitation that doesn't allow .ISOs to be put into a drive? Sure I can mount them and move the files but sometimes it isn't what I want to do... (for example any game that works for both systems, aka my girlfriends love of sims3... when i mount that it will only give me the unwanted mac files... unless i open it with some sort of program like zipeg but that doesn't work sometimes...)

2) Is there any way around the 4 GB limit imposed on fat32? Seems like a really low, horrible limit that needs to be fixed...

As for #1, i'm not sure what you mean, as in storing ISO files on a flash drive? Or using them from a flash drive?

#2 Nope. Unless you wipe it and format as NTFS, you're not getting more than four. It's an old standard, which when i'm saying old, i mean windows 9x old. NTFS became more common after Windows 2k and pretty much standard by XP. Only small flash drives (<4gb usually) use FAT32 anymore. Newer ones use either proprietary (included with drivers on a tiny fat32 or NTFS partition so it plays with windows well), or just use NTFS.

[DauntlessK]

So the flash memory is different than my portable hard drive, if i'm getting that right? I can run the fat32 on my external HD, which works for both systems but there is no way for the flash memory to use something like that? its either one system or the other?

Quote

As for #1, i'm not sure what you mean, as in storing ISO files on a flash drive? Or using them from a flash drive?

If I have an .ISO... rather than mounting it and getting all the files from it... because if i did that for the sims, for example, it would give me the mac files... which i do not want, it doesn't seem to allow me to just move the .iso into the HD or flash drive so i can mount the iso once i move it to the PC.

#2 - I figured it was old. But do other formats support both systems?

Thanks for all the insight!

[Assassinsf]

You need to fomat the USB drive to NTFS for windows to see it I believe. to do this you can type Disk Management into the start buttons search programs and files and search for disk management. Find the drive you want to format,

right click the drive you want to format

delete volume, it should then say that the space is unallocated

then right click again and hit format then choose NTFS.

Or you can go the hard way and use a program called G parted and select the drive and reformat it.

Edited by Assassinsf, 17 August 2012 - 01:24 PM.

[Assassinsf]

You can always change the format back, Windows won't recognize it but your computer will that is when you have to use disk management or a program like G parted and change it your self. Gparted is a free program.

Edited by Assassinsf, 17 August 2012 - 01:28 PM.

[DauntlessK]

Hm. So if I reformat it to NTFS via windows, I can use it on my mac as well? I read that they're compatible... right? Seems like an easier fix than I was expecting...

The weird thing is that the flash drive doesn't appear in the top of disk management (with all the letters) only at the bottom where it shows the different partitions and such. I don't know if that is normal...

edit: NTFS on mac only supports read-only for the most part unless you hack or use some programs.

Edited by DauntlessK, 17 August 2012 - 01:46 PM.