Flash drive wants to format

[Vaughany]

How can I save my files before my flash drive formats? I am using a Mac.

 

[TwistedFury]

Your drive is probably formatted to NTFS, which is a Windows partition. Take the USB drive to a PC with Windows or a Linux distribution, and copy it there.

 

[azguard4]

I believe you can copy the files off of your USB drive to the MAC; it can read NTFS but it cannot write TO NTFS. Once you've copied your files to your MAC then you can format it. You could use FAT32 which MAC can read/write, but FAT32 doesn't support files larger than 4GB, nor file/folder permissions, security etc.

 

[Vaughany]

I believe you can copy the files off of your USB drive to the MAC; it can read NTFS but it cannot write TO NTFS. Once you've copied your files to your MAC then you can format it. You could use FAT32 which MAC can read/write, but FAT32 doesn't support files larger than 4GB, nor file/folder permissions, security etc.

 

[Vaughany]

How do i do it, step by step? please

 

[azguard4]

Can you read the USB drive in the MAC at all, can you see the folders/files?

 

[Vaughany]

No, when i insert the flash a warning sign saying 'The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer.' With options to initialise, ignore or reject. The flash doesn't appear under devices when inserted.

 

[azguard4]

You can try to initialize it and see if you can read it then, MAC OS can read NTFS. If initializing it doesn't work then TwistedFury is correct and you'll have to use a Windows or Linux machine to copy your files off.

 

[TwistedFury]

Yea, as I said though, check it out on a Windows PC.