GAAAAAHHHHHH TECHNOLOGYYYYYYY!! ::screaming into the sky, shaking fists:: - Rant and help?

PapaBPoppin

I’ve had a 5tb external drive for a year now (seagate, offa Amazon). Used it for pc/android backup. Got 3tb open on it still. Dope!

Getting into video editing… need storage… HAVE storage! Plug drive into iPad. Entire drive Read Only
Fk.

Now I’ve learned that NTFS is completely unwriteable on iOS

Mother f….. how is this not a fixed, normalized thing now!?

Decisions about technology and Ease Of Use vs …misplaced priority of propriety(?)
It’s bonkers

And then… what do I do with the 2tb currently on there?! I don’t have storage for my storage at that level. I’d actually need storage for my storages storage if I’m trying to do a legit generational count of Greats to describe this family tree

Ya think ya get it all figured out 😅

Rant ended here—

So, potential help request?

Workaround idea - could I safely create a partition out of the unused 3 gigs (like 2.5 of it) and reformat that partition to whatever fat I need to utilize? (Specifics evade me currently)

Any other thoughts or ideas?

wim

NTFS support has always been spottily supported on anything but Windows operating systems due to its proprietary nature and potential licensing issues with open source projects. That said, more and more operating systems are including drivers by default.

Re-partitioning the disk is a good approach, though not without risk. You should back up those files first if you possibly can just to be sure.

I hesitate to recommend the best partitioning tool, not having done it with anything but SystemRescue for a long, long, time. It may be that the native Windows or MacOS partition managers are able to handle the task these days, I don't know. It used to be long ago that they didn't like resizing partitions. I expect that MacOS won't resize a NTFS partition if it can't even write to one.

SystemRescue has never let me down, but I'm a techie, so I'm not intimidated by the process of using it. ymmv.

PapaBPoppin

@wim said:
NTFS support has always been spottily supported on anything but Windows operating systems due to its proprietary nature and potential licensing issues with open source projects. That said, more and more operating systems are including drivers by default.

Re-partitioning the disk is a good approach, though not without risk. You should back up those files first if you possibly can just to be sure.

I hesitate to recommend the best partitioning tool, not having done it with anything but SystemRescue for a long, long, time. It may be that the native Windows or MacOS partition managers are able to handle the task these days, I don't know. It used to be long ago that they didn't like resizing partitions. I expect that MacOS won't resize a NTFS partition if it can't even write to one.

SystemRescue has never let me down, but I'm a techie, so I'm not intimidated by the process of using it. ymmv.

Oh! Dope to have on hand! I'm a very familiar user with bootable options of both oses and system tools (lived off of bootable Ubuntu when I had a deep rooted issue that took me months to parse out years ago)

Haven't looked into partitioners of that ilk tho! (So many anti virus and malware bootables used.... Sooo many xD)

Yeah, I'll go thru the backup and see what's most important to backup and just try a partition off of what I got (don't start a riot) and I'll see if I can save a lot lot

Thank yous
Is what I got
If I remember this

wim

I usually run SystemRescue from a USB stick these days: https://www.system-rescue.org/Installing-SystemRescue-on-a-USB-memory-stick/

Be very careful with gParted. It's easy to pick the wrong disk!

The messy bit is you'll have to resize that NTFS partition first to make room for another partition. You might want to do a multi step process:

1. Shrink the NTFS partition
2. Add an exFAT formatted partition in the freed up space
3. Copy the content across and test, test, and test again the new partition.
4. Remove the original partition and resize the new to take up the full disk. Or not. You might want to keep them both.

Take anything I say with a huge grain of salt. I've not done this kind of stuff often, and not for several years.

wim

You might want to use fat32 rather than exFAT if the Android device doesn't support exFAT. Fat32 individual file size taps out at 4gb, and partitions at 8tb.

PapaBPoppin

@wim said:
I usually run SystemRescue from a USB stick these days: https://www.system-rescue.org/Installing-SystemRescue-on-a-USB-memory-stick/

Be very careful with gParted. It's easy to pick the wrong disk!

The messy bit is you'll have to resize that NTFS partition first to make room for another partition. You might want to do a multi step process:

1. Shrink the NTFS partition
2. Add an exFAT formatted partition in the freed up space
3. Copy the content across and test, test, and test again the new partition.
4. Remove the original partition and resize the new to take up the full disk. Or not. You might want to keep them both.

Take anything I say with a huge grain of salt. I've not done this kind of stuff often, and not for several years.

I'll certainly test the fk out of the new partition before using (thanks for that reminder. I like to jump the gun on things, and I guarantee that I would have skipped the test... And run into issues later)

But I'll probably keep em separate. I've got a few 30+gig zips* backed up on there... Really don't want to play the re-merge to multiple smaller files game (*yeah, I got a nasty habit of grabbing fully setup arcade packs For custom built systems and high end Launch Box setups xD For raspberry pi, steam deck, PC.....)

@wim said:
You might want to use fat32 rather than exFAT if the Android device doesn't support exFAT. Fat32 individual file size taps out at 4gb, and partitions at 8tb.

OH! Fantastic bit of info thank you. I cannot currently use it on Android and that would save a LOT of headache! I wasn't even considering that. And I truly didn't know if 32 or ex would be the better option

It's pretty clear now! MANY THANKS! 🙌