A little help, NTFS formated for Xbox 360?

[Anonymous74534]

Hi I have bought a Transcend TS16GJF600 16GB JetFlash 600 Hi-Speed USB 2.0 Flash Drive now I have formated it to NTFC so I can put MKV AVI ect and plug it into my blue ray player which works fine. I also got it for my XBOX 360 as well but the problem I have is when I put it into the xbox 360 it configures it for that fine but it converts it to FAT so I can save games on it but I dont want it for that I want to play films on it so it wipes it how can I get around this ? I thought it would work as I have an old usb memory stick which works fine but its only 4 GB and thats FAT and also I can put avi on it is it the stick thats the problem or what hope someone can help me its driving me mad.

[hech54]

I don't even own and XBox and a 15 second Google search found this:
http://www.xbox360forum.com/xbox-forum/threads/59041-Do-External-HDD-s-Need-to-Be-Fat32

[Anonymous74534]

I don't even own and XBox and a 15 second Google search found this:
http://www.xbox360forum.com/xbox-forum/threads/59041-Do-External-HDD-s-Need-to-Be-Fat32

Thanks for the help. So my old 4GB stick works because its under 4GB but the 16GB doesnt strange so I take it anything 4GB and under will work for both?

[mh2360]

The 16GB stick needs to formatted on a PC with FAT32 in order to be seen by the Xbox 360. The down side is that FAT32 has a limit which means you can't use it with files over 4GB in size.

[johns0]

I had the same problem with my ps3 in that it only plays usb that are fat32 so i bought a blu-ray player that supports ntfs usb.

[Bjs]

Grab a bootable copy of ubuntu (non server) and boot the computer from cdrom first (setup in bios) ... and try to format that drive to hfs+ ... ubuntu can read and write from both ntfs and hfs+ ... if it works with that particular flash drive then job done thou a bit of a nuisances.

On some systems with xp and up you may need to temporarily disable in the bios all hd boot options ... or they may skip boot from cdrom.

And welcome Kevin72

[mh2360]

Even if you did use HFS+ and you manage to put a >4GB MP4/AVI file on the stick, the 360 still wouldn't play it.

It's often thought that the 4GB file size limit is due to the limits of FAT32. In fact it is Microsoft in their infinite wisdom who saw fit to limit the size of certain media formats to 4GB.

The only exception is WMV (of course ), which can be as big as you like.

[teodz1984]

I thought FAT32 limits the size of al file put on in to 4GB. Anything more and the file stops copying more than 4G... You get a truncated file or no file at all... Check out the specs in the table here.

Let's hope they make XBOX become compatible with NTFS or EXFAT in the future...

[Cornucopia]

Even if you did use HFS+ and you manage to put a >4GB MP4/AVI file on the stick, the 360 still wouldn't play it.

It's often thought that the 4GB file size limit is due to the limits of FAT32. In fact it is Microsoft in their infinite wisdom who saw fit to limit the size of certain media formats to 4GB.

The only exception is WMV (of course ), which can be as big as you like.

You're muddying the waters.

By design, xbox360 only accepts usb drives that use the Fat/Fat32 filesystem. That means 4GB is the largest ANY single file that can be put on it, regardless of format.
There is also the problem of being able to format larger sizes as Fat32, but using 3rd party tools can get around this.

The thing you mention about a media format's inherent size limit really only pertains to AVI/WAV (which, depending on how it was created and which app is reading it, may have a 1GB or 2GB or 4GB limit) and while this could be considered Microsoft's "fault" has more to do with short-sightedness on the part of both the IFF/RIFF team and the AVI/WAV team that created it in the late '80s (couldn't conceive of a file that would need to be that big).
All the other major formats have much larger limitations (all of them have something). This includes QT, MPEG, MP4, ASF/WMV, and MKV.

And IIWY, I wouldn't hold my breath on supplemental acceptable filesystems for Xbox360...

Scott

[yoda313]

Even if you did use HFS+ and you manage to put a >4GB MP4/AVI file on the stick, the 360 still wouldn't play it.

It's often thought that the 4GB file size limit is due to the limits of FAT32. In fact it is Microsoft in their infinite wisdom who saw fit to limit the size of certain media formats to 4GB.

The only exception is WMV (of course ), which can be as big as you like.

Thats not true at least on normal usb harddrives. I can't speak to usb sticks but usb external enclosures that are formatted to hfs+ DO work on the 360 just as if it was a regular xbox branded harddrive. I have that mac drive plus program and did get it to work just fine.

Now I don't know if you can utilize it for memory card purposes for gaming but I don't see why not.

And as I said I only did it on a usb enclosure not a usb memory stick so I don't know why it wouldn't.

I don't know if any of the most recent dashboard updates to the 360 have changed anything. I haven't done this in a long while but it DID work at one point.

EDIT - Granted I did see your comment about file type sizes. I can't remember if my test was on an hd wmv file. If so than that would support your argument that the 360 can see large wmv files but not other types. I don't remember what my test was on so I can't argue that point from personal experience.

But I guess my main point was the 360 CAN read hfs+ drives. That much is a fact.

[Cornucopia]

...well I guess you COULD have held your breath!

I apologize.
I find that M$ has created an HFS+ driver for Xbox360 (mainly for access to iPod storage). So, they COULD conceiveably create further drivers. I still doubt they will unless there's a clear business incentive to do so.

The rest of what I said is still true. Not everyone can create HFS+ filesystems (really does help to have MacDrive installed for that). That limits the spread of "larger than 4GB files".

Scott