Can't see some folders on external USB Drive (exFat)

Question

Can't see some folders on external USB Drive (exFat)

Hello, I can't see some files on my external HDD drive. I'm going crazy!

The external drive is formatted with exFat on this mac
A folder of 65GB size was copied to the drive on windows
Connected to Mac, about a quarter of folders inside that one folder (which themselves contain audio books) are not visible...
Connecting back to Windows they are visible. The size is shown as 65GB on both windows and mac.
I checked hidden files
ls -la does not see these files either on mac...

The files have cyrillic names, but I have not checked if all of them do. Some of cyrillic have been copied though, not sure it's the language. They have a dot in the file names, but haven't checked if this might cause some issues.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Mac mini

Posted on Jun 16, 2023 2:13 PM

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Answer 1

HWTech

Level 9

58,232 points

Jun 17, 2023 10:15 AM in response to durkadurkadurka

Make sure to disconnect all external devices from the Mac. Then connect the exFAT drive to see if you can access the contents of that folder. A few years ago I saw some people have an issue where some items on an external drive were not visible and it was due to a Wacom tablet being connected before the drive was mounted. There is a possibility another external device could cause a similar problem.

You can also try booting the Mac into Safe Mode to see if it makes any difference. If Safe Mode works to access those items, then it most likely means you have some third party software installed which is interfering with the normal operation of macOS.

There is a good possibility those filenames are causing a problem as well as you have already surmised.

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Answer 2

Jun 25, 2023 1:50 AM in response to Matti Haveri

I have bought a synology NAS to circumvent the problem and when connecting to Synology through "Connect to Server" through Mac's Finder, it sees these folders, but only a few files inside instead of dozens and the folders can't be copied. The only way to copy is to use the browser interface of the NAS (so I finally found a way).

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Answer 3

Jun 17, 2023 10:40 AM in response to durkadurkadurka

FWIW I had trouble with a Mac-formatted 128 GB exFAT (GUID) not showing all disk space on Windows 10 while exFAT (MBR) was OK.

AFAIK some filename characters have had issues for some users with Ventura.

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Answer 4

Jul 15, 2024 1:23 AM in response to durkadurkadurka

I have the same problem but with larger amount of files - about 10TB on 32TB RAID0 ExFat formatted on MacOS. Windows sees everything, MacOS doesn't see folders and files which are clearly avaliable on Windows. MacOS Ventura and Sonoma the same. If it would be smaller files I could manage trying to copy it somewhere else but is a huuuge problem to edit this amount of videos on Mac now without copying it. I would have to edit on Windows... Sorry for this words but I tried to find a solution and no-one has it. Please help I could still believe in this system :)

[Edited by Moderator]

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Answer 5

BDAqua

Level 10

242,735 points

Jul 15, 2024 7:08 AM in response to NemezisEgo

Yeah, you'd have to check in Windows®... was just fishing for clues to this mystery.

Might see if we can spot something in Terminal...

ls -l /Volumes/SSD2

Instead of SSD2 you'd use the ExFat volime or a folder nme tht you knew contained an unseen file or folder.

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Answer 6

BDAqua

Level 10

242,735 points

Jul 15, 2024 2:31 AM in response to NemezisEgo

Can you compare the permissions on ones you can read & can't read on the Mac?

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Answer 7

Jul 15, 2024 2:52 AM in response to BDAqua

How can I compare it if I don't see the folders & files on MacOS? :) I can see them only on Windows - the properties are all the same for all files there.

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Can't see some folders on external USB Drive (exFat)

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