Bought a USB drive (4gb) to take films in .avi format off the mac and run through the xbox so can watch them on the TV. However, the xbox doesn’t recognise any movies on the device (although seems to see the device is there) and when put drive back on the computer it’s mashed up the files into nonsense? Tried reformatting the drive a couple times and then trying again but keeps happening

help!

think Xboxes can’t read big Hard drives, but i would have thought 4gb should have been fine. I had an issue where a 500Gb drive wasn’t readable and had to format it in a MAC format and drop all the files on, everything was ok after that.

You have to format the USB drive on the xbox first if you’re not already doing that

Is it formatted FAT32, or some hokey Mac format?

Is it formatted FAT32, or some hokey Mac format?

Amusingly, XBOXs read Mac Journaled, but not NTFS.

For the OP, format it to FAT32 and you will be fine.

see i formatted it on the xbox originally but that left 2MB free space which seemed wrong?

(Formatted FAT when done on the mac)

see i formatted it on the xbox originally but that left 2MB free space which seemed wrong?

(Formatted FAT when done on the mac)

It does stick some sort of file structure on the stick but that seems wrong.

It does stick some sort of file structure on the stick but that seems wrong.

Yeah last night used an old 1gb and seemed to leave about a third of the space, so I’m baffled why it wouldn’t leave masses on the 4gb?

i formatted it on the xbox originally

You’ve formatted it as a memory card for saved games rather than a regular USB drive, would be my guess. Format it as FAT32 on the Mac, and you should be golden.

You’ve formatted it as a memory card for saved games rather than a regular USB drive, would be my guess. Format it as FAT32 on the Mac, and you should be golden.

I realised that too so I formatted on the mac. It didn’t work and led to the above situation of mangling files

Do you get the same problem without plugging it into the Xbox? Ie, is it just corrupting on insertion / removal?

i removed it and then put it back in mac where i can see its corrupted

Is that a “yes”? It’s not very clear.

Where I’m going with this is,

a) are you removing it too soon before it’s completed writing and committed all the data?

b) is it an el cheapo USB drive bought on eBay from the Far East, and is actually a counterfeit card which corrupts as soon as you go past 2Gb or whatever the part actually can hold?

dont think im removing it too soon, i’ll try again

cheapo one from maplin £6

Are you formatting the whole drive, or just the partition?

I don’t know much about Macs, but on Windows there’s a ‘safely remove hardware’ option which commits the write cache.

The stick should be fine from Maplin, they’re not usually known for selling fakes. No reason why it can’t simply be broken though.

Are you formatting the whole drive, or just the partition?

😯

on the USB there is only 1 partition so does the USB drive as a default really

EDIT: ok tried with the old 1gb drive and it saw the files! (wouldnt play them as need an update via xbox live)

maybe it’s the new drive that’s an issue, sack it im away for some lunch now im starving