ext drives xfat vs mac os extended

[lori5060]

did not have a clue where to post this....

i am in process of copying all my old precious files to another drive to do some editing and clearing out dups.

the old ext drive is in xfat format and the new drive is in mac os extended.
i have been comparing folder sizes (mb or gb) to make sure i have all the files.
and see that the mac os one seems to have smaller size (mb or gb) compared to same in old xfat ext drive.

i checked each folder for its contents and looks like all is there...just wonder??
does files copied from xfat to mac os change? if not... i have to look deeper into why the file info is not the same.

and now i have another issue!!!. which is more critical!!
the usb connection to macbook moved and old drive in xfat drive was disconnected and not ejected properly. now i cannot access it at all.
check disk utility and did first aid.... gave me an error message. see attached. i did notice that the drive is 'not mounted' what does that mean. if i mount it, will i be able to access that ext drive.

i would be so very sad...cuz all my older files are on that drive.

 

[ferrarr]

Restart the MBP without the drive connected, and if that doesn't help, try restarting the MBP with the drive connected. If neither of those work, restart into Recovery and run Disk Utility > First Aid from there.

 

[lori5060]

i did all of those things. and still nothing. worked. i changed ports too.

then went away to do something else and when i came back the drive icon was there on my desktop. guess it just needed time to recover!!
what a sigh of relief. i checked and all folders/files seem to be there.

so now i guess either i was too impatient. or my ext drive is getting tired and i need to make sure i have all my data on another ext drive...which is what i was in process of doing anyway.

 

[ferrarr]

Excellent work.

 

[MacInWin]

The USB cable probably got nudged and the connection broken.

When I want to compare one area to another I use a Finder-like product called Commander One. It lets me open the two locations side by side. At the bottom of each location it shows the space and number of files/directories in each window. I can then open the same folder in both panes, get the same data and keep comparing. If I get to one with different counts of files, I can compare them side by side by sorting both by filename and seeing where the list changes.

Commander One is in the Mac App Store and has a free version that will do all you need to get what you need.

 

[lori5060]

thanks Jake.. can look into that... much better than going thru info option on mac...

 

[chscag]

Lori:

File sizes will always be larger for drives formatted as FAT, FAT-32, exFAT, because of cluster size. The FAT file system is a non journaled file system and more prone to errors. Copying files from FAT to HFS+ will result in a smaller file size. That's normal.

 

[lori5060]

oh that is so good to know.... thanks a lot