Files on NTFS USB drive not showing

LandyMan

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Me again :D

I have an external USB drive (100Gb) running two NTFS partitions (this HDD used to be my HP HDD which I just popped out to be able to transfer all my stuff to the MBP).

Whenever I plug it into the MBP, certain directories just don't show (I have 23 directories in a Setup directory as showed by WinXP in Parellels, but MAC OS X only sees 17).

Using the terminal window, I can CD to the "missing" directories, but they don't show up in ls or anything. Oh, and I checked, they are not marked hidden in WinXP.

Any ideas?

EDIT: Just noticed the specific partition is compressed.
 
NTFS on OsX is buggy at best. The compression is probably making it unreadable. AFAIK NTFS is also read only.
 
Yep, NTFS is read only. This is totally crap, as I need to get the stuff off the HDD to be able to reformat in FAT32.

Parallels USB driver uses v1.1, which makes it damn slow to copy. Guess I'll have to plug it into the Win2000 at home and copy via the network :(

EDIT: WRT compression: Don't think it is that, as it reads some directories and some not, all compressed
 
Dumped all of my files via Win2000 and LAN. However, WinXP (at least) cannot partition FAT32 of 100Gb. Mac OS X did it in about 1.5 minutes :D
 
Dumped all of my files via Win2000 and LAN. However, WinXP (at least) cannot partition FAT32 of 100Gb. Mac OS X did it in about 1.5 minutes :D

Interesting... I thought that FAT32 had a physical limit of around 32Gb partitions and a file transfer limit of 4gb.

Does your windows setup recognise the full 100gb fat partition?

OK scrap that... seems the limitation is in the XP format command, not in the file system. Seems like XP will recognise large fat32 partitions, just not format them.... makes complete MS-sense!:D
 
Last edited:
Bob, I was also under the impression first that 32Gb is the max, then I read a few docs (much like you did). The best is the MS advice to format the drive using Win98 or ME, I mean WTF? XP is supposed to be "flagship" but you have to format using Win98/ME? idiots
 
I think you're still limited to the max file size of 4gb, right? :confused:
 
Depends on what you rip, and TO what you rip. Biggest one was to iPod, 1.8gb
 
Depends on what you rip, and TO what you rip. Biggest one was to iPod, 1.8gb
I keep all my mail data, working files, and other sensitive data on encrypted dvd sized disk images which are auto-mounted when required. Makes backing up a snap but I wouldnt be able to use a fat32 for that.
 
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