Hi mates, I just buy a SanDisk Extreme 1TB Portable SSD to store my files. By using a Windows PC, I copied my files from my old External HHD (NTFS format) to my new SanDisk Portable SSD (exFAT format).
After that, when I was checking the copied files on SDD by using Mac, I can not see the files. The SSD has been detected but I can’t see any files in it. I can see only the software install files. The SSD is also visible on Disk Utility and I can see almost the half of the disk is used. But the files that are using that storage is not visible on Finder. (check the screenshot below)
As I read, exFAT format should be working both Mac and Windows computers. I didn’t understand why this happening.
Do you have any idea why I can’t see my files?
I want to use this SSD on both my computers (Mac and Windows, but mostly on Mac). What is your suggestions for that?
“Do the names of your files/folders that you copied start with “.”? If so, those are hidden by default. You should remove that from the name and try connecting the drive to your Mac again to see if they’re visible then.
If still not visible or the above doesn’t apply, check if the Mac sees them as hidden files. Hit Command+Shift+”.” with the Finder window in focus and see if they appear then. If they do, you may want to unhide them to access them easier. You can do this in Windows if they’re hidden there through right clicking them and using Properties to unhide them.”
There are also some other helpful comments;
“Better to use HFS+, and get a free/freemium HFS+ driver on Windows. Or, if that option is not viable to you, you can format/erase the disk on Mac in ExFAT, which should fix the issue. Windows/factory format may have different cluster/sector sizes that Mac does not like.”
“exFAT formatted on Windows is not readable by MacOS. Found this out the hard way myself. Erase and format on Mac, and then it will work on both.”
The following methods can help you get your Mac to recognize your SanDisk Portable SSD (exFAT format):
Stop the fsck Process
If you disconnect your exFAT drive from a Windows PC without ejecting it, macOS will attempt to repair it using the fsck process when you reconnect it. However, this process may block your SSD from mounting on Mac.
To access your exFAT drive quickly, follow these steps:
Open Terminal.
Run the command below to see if fsck is preventing access:
ps aux | grep fsck
If it is, stop fsck with this command:
sudo pkill -f fsck
Enter your administrator password when prompted, and press Enter.
You can repair the drive on macOS using Disk Utility or on Windows using its built-in Error Checking tool.
Reformat the SSD
Large exFAT drives formatted on Windows may not mount on Mac due to incompatible allocation unit sizes. Windows often uses a 2048 KB or larger allocation unit size, which macOS can’t read (macOS only supports sizes between 512 bytes and 1024 KB). For example, a 5 TB exFAT drive might default to 256 KB on Mac and will not mount if the size is outside the 128K-1024K range. To resolve this, it’s best to format the SSD on macOS or reformat it to a compatible allocation unit size for both systems. (Remember to back up your files first.)
