USB3.0 / Ubuntu

[Onoff]

My lad has given me some films on a USB3.0 128GB memory stick.

 

It shows up OK in the wife's Win 7 desktop

 

In my laptop running Zorin 12 32-bit (Ubuntu base) it won't mount, when I try I get this message:

 

 

Which is a pain as this lappy lives by the tv on which I want to watch the stuff!

 

The stand alone media player won't see it either.

 

Any suggestions?

 

Cheers

 

[PeterW]

Exfat is an old MS file system type - can you copy them to the Win7 laptop and then reformat the USB key and put them back ..?

[MikeSharp01]

8 minutes ago, PeterW said:

copy them to the Win7 laptop and then reformat the USB key and put them back

The man from the north speaks correctly - but you might ask your boy how he created an EXFAT format on what must be a recent USB key. MS used EXFAT from about 10 years back and I think they keep some of the 'secrets' to themselves. Other formats are faster these days anyway.

[Jeremy Harris]

I've found that some flavours of Linux are OK'ish with ExFAT, some aren't.  Mint is sort of OK and will read an ExFAT USB stick OK, but throws a wobbly when trying to write to it.  I only have one ExFAT formatted USB stick, solely because it's the only format that works for large USB sticks with Windows XP, and I still have a Win XP netbook.

 

@PeterW's suggestion is the one I use when this happens, but I'll copy the files across to a stick that's formatted with something like NTFS, as that seems to work with most newer Windows systems and every Linux system I've tried it with.  I try not to have any sticks formatted to something like ext3 or ext4 unless I have to, as it's a pain loading stuff to Windows to allow them to work.

[Jeremy Harris]

1 minute ago, MikeSharp01 said:

The man from the north speaks correctly - but you might ask your boy how he created an EXFAT format on what must be a recent USB key. MS used EXFAT from about 10 years back and I think they keep some of the 'secrets' to themselves. Other formats are faster these days anyway.

 

ExFAT is pretty much the only way to get something like a 64Gb USB stick to work with Windows XP, I've found.  May be why this USB stick is formatted this way.

[Onoff]

Cheers all. Going to try and reformat it NTFS. In the back of my mind there's a reason why it's exFAT...

[Jeremy Harris]

3 minutes ago, Onoff said:

Cheers all. Going to try and reformat it NTFS. In the back of my mind there's a reason why it's exFAT...

 

The only reason for it being ExFAT usually is because it's too big a USB stick for Windows XP to natively read/write.  XP was limited to FAT32, IIRC, so wouldn't handle large USB sticks, at least that's why I have a 64Gb stick that's formatted to ExFAT, simply for transferring stuff to an XP machine.

[ProDave]

2 hours ago, JSHarris said:

 

The only reason for it being ExFAT usually is because it's too big a USB stick for Windows XP to natively read/write.  XP was limited to FAT32, IIRC, so wouldn't handle large USB sticks, at least that's why I have a 64Gb stick that's formatted to ExFAT, simply for transferring stuff to an XP machine.

XP is quite happy with NTFS which should comfortably do 128GB

[Jeremy Harris]

14 minutes ago, ProDave said:

XP is quite happy with NTFS which should comfortably do 128GB

 

 

That's weird, as I had to format the 64Gb drive I have to ExFAT, specifically to get it to work with my netbook that runs XP.  I'll have a play tomorrow to see what's going on, as having that stick formatted as ExFAT is a PITA.

[Onoff]

NTFS worked. However...seems this is all I needed;

 

sudo apt install exfat-fuse exfat-utils

[SteamyTea]

When I was at university, they gave out a load of coursework on USB sticks.

Made a mess of the MACs