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mounting FAT 32 on OSX


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Hi,

Looking for a definitive answer here ...but using someone elses OSX on a G5 and want to plug in an external disk and copy my photo's and stuff over... we (me and GFs family) are with relatives so don't want to do anything might LOOK like its messing up her Mac. Plugging the disk in says it can't be read and so it offers to format it but ls /dev shows rdisk1s1 so p[resumably I just mount it?

 

managed to find a terminal ... anyway no idea what the root password is nor if its set so suggestions please :D

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by default the root password/account isn't set. use sudo :) - it may ask for the password, it's the password of the first user set up on the system (IIRC).

 

it may recognize the disk/partition but not the filesystem for some odd reason (hence the no auto-mounting)...which doesn't make sense to me. my external drive is formated fat32 and all I do is plug it in and it appears in the finder (file browser, basically) on the left. very odd that you're having problems with it...have you checked the drive recently for errors?

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Thanks tyme, thats what I needed ... I was surprised the disk wasn't mounted automatically. not sure 100% of the filesystem since its my GF's brothers disk ... but Im presuming it must be FAT32 since he can read/write from linux and XP... and I can't see him having put REISERfs on it.. it might be something to do with the FAT partition being biggern than windows supports? since it was probably created under linux... and I saw somnewhere the MAC supports it even though Windows doesn't (and obviously linux doesn't care)

 

Anyway the idea is storing my photo's on the disk since we are all in Oz right now and for some reason it seems hard to find someone to write the photos to DVD (and I don't really trust shops to split it across 2-3 CDs) had bad experiences where they only wrote the first 600MB of a 2GB card...before so I like to make sure they are all on one (its more complex because I only shoot raw images so the photo shops can't actually read the files as images just files)

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Thanks tyme, thats what I needed ... I was surprised the disk wasn't mounted automatically. not sure 100% of the filesystem since its my GF's brothers disk ... but Im presuming it must be FAT32 since he can read/write from linux and XP... and I can't see him having put REISERfs on it.. it might be something to do with the FAT partition being biggern than windows supports? since it was probably created under linux... and I saw somnewhere the MAC supports it even though Windows doesn't (and obviously linux doesn't care)

 

maybe it's ntfs. Admittedly it'd be most unusual for usb disk of any sort to use ntfs, but it's not unreasonable... I've setup sd cards with ext2 :) Windows can read write any reasonable sized FAT32 partition, it just can't create them bigger than ~36gb. I've got a 131gb partition that windows reads quite happily.

 

What's the disk? and external drive, or a flash card?

 

Anyway the idea is storing my photo's on the disk since we are all in Oz right now and for some reason it seems hard to find someone to write the photos to DVD (and I don't really trust shops to split it across 2-3 CDs) had bad experiences where they only wrote the first 600MB of a 2GB card...before so I like to make sure they are all on one (its more complex because I only shoot raw images so the photo shops can't actually read the files as images just files)

 

Got any other networked computers? Otherwise....... we could try and work something out when/if we meet up.

 

James

Edited by iphitus
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Iph, its just a 200GB external USB2 .(LACIE)... I have copied stuff onto it from my PC and I don't have NTFS write enabled so Im sure its not that :D nor does his father's desktop, his laptop is XP so I figure it must be FAT32 ...

Presently using his fathers laptop and will transfer onto DVD but his father is somewhat paranoid about his laptop ....

(won't connect it to ANY network).... honestly its all totally illogical but he can't be convinced otherwise!

and won't let patrick my GF's brother connect his disk... so we are left with the MAC...

(and its a real beauty anyway 20" cinema screen)

Prices here seem pretty good so I might get myself a laptop.... (my old one seems to have found itself a new home with a friend who is a artist and has no money so I might get a new one myself :D) perhaps straight after XMAS if the salkes look good....

 

Iph... your advice greatly appreciated :D saw a laptop place in the city with good deals (and I get 10% back) on tax....

Its laptop"world" or similar on the street with all the camera/electronics

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