Need to read FAT extrernal HDD on my Mac

Hi guys,

I've got copied content from my server on external HDD what is formatted to FAT. Is it possible to read content of this disk?

When I plugged disk through USB, I've got message "The disk you inserted not readable by this computer"

I've already checked it in DiskUtility but I am not able to find more info about disk - there is only name "disk1s1"

Normally FAT 32 drives can be both read and written to on a Mac with no trouble. In fact if I remember correctly the disk name will usually appear in Disk Utility rather than disk1s1.

Do you have access to a PC that you can use to verify the drive?

@Slydude - Thank you for reply. I've tried to run this HDD on Windows Vista today. It seams that there is problem too. I've contacted our programmer who showed me that content on HDD is. So, I will wait for his reply later today.

You're welcome. I suspect that there may be some directory structure errors causing the problem. Initially I thought maybe the drive was formatted FAT16 which is sometimes problematic but that is unlikely since it is not often used anymore. Let us know what happens.

@Slydude - I've just have call with programmer. He said that it should be formatted to vFAT (FAT32). It shouldn't be problem for Mac, should it? I agree with you that it could be directory structure error. I am going to browse and try to find solution.

Thank you again for your time. I let know more later.

No that shouldn't be a problem at all. Macs can both read and write to FAT 32 drives. I would have hoped that it could be read on the VISTA machine and perhaps one of those utilities could correct the problem.

If you are unable to get any Windows utilities to repair the problem it might be necessary to reformat the drive. Don't do that though unless you have a copy of the data elsewhere.

BTW what kinds of files are these? Though that shouldn't cause the problem you are facing. Are any of the files larger than 4 GB?

Yes, it is bigger than 4 GB. I read that it could be caused by this. I think you found problem now. There are photos from our website and I sure that it is bigger than 4GB.

Tomas

I'm afraid I might not have made things as clear as I could have. The drive itself can be larger than 4 GB and individual folders can be 4 GB or more (I think). The problem arises when individual files are larger than 4 GB.