I can't rip a disc to secondary HFS+ storage

[ToxicDreamz]

This is not a typical issue... and it may or may not be an issue with MakeMKV, but I'm going to ask about it anyway.

I'm on a Hackintosh I built which is dual-booting OS X Mountain Lion 10.8.3 and Windows 7 Ultimate. I have zero issues ripping to secondary storage when I'm booted into OS X... everything works fine. So the OS X version of MakeMKV is great. However, when I'm running MakeMKV in Windows and I want to save to a secondary HFS+ hard drive, MakeMKV gives me an error stating that I cannot save to that drive because the partition format only supports files up to 4 GB, which simply isn't true. Maybe MakeMKV is mistaking the HFS+ for FAT32 or something because I know FAT32 only supports file sizes up to 4 GB, which would make sense for the program to bring back the error, but this isn't the case.

It's also not an issue of running out of space, I have 2 Terabytes left on said drive.

I'm using MacDrive version 8 as well which allows me to read/write to/from HFS+ partitions in Windows and maybe there's some kind of conflict between the two programs.

It's not a big issue, but when I'm in Windows I sometimes would like to rip a Blu-ray or two and my biggest means of storage is the HFS+ drive (if this issue can't be resolved I may just go ahead and format all my drives as xFAT to remove the 4 GB limit of FAT32, but also for cross-compatibility between OS X and Windows). If you would like me to post a log, I can rip another Blu-ray this way to replicate the error and maybe you can get an idea if it's something that can or cannot be addressed.

Anyway, thanks for reading. o_0

[Romansh]

ExFAT is supposedly unsafe (less reliable than FAT32, even - see Google).

[Woodstock]

The issue is, what is Macdrive telling Windows (and MakeMKV) about the characteristics of the HFS drive?

A lot of drivers manage "foreign" drive geometries by mapping them into something the host operating system can recognize. If they make it look like NTFS, Windows will try to treat it as such, and expect it to be able to store certain meta information. If it is made to look like FAT32, Windows won't expect to be able to store its meta information, leaving the Mac attributes intact. Or it can make it look like an SMB network resource... which can impose limits of 4GB files, if only 32-bit pointers are allowed.

One test would be to take a 5GB or larger file, and try to copy it to the HFS drive with Windows Explorer. If it complains that the file is too big, it's in the driver, and MakeMKV isn't going to be able to work around it.

[mike admin]

On windows there is a specific API call to ask "filesystem, what is your name?". If the filesystem answers "FAT" then MakeMKV assumes that the filesystem has 4GB limit. Apparently macdrive reports itself as FAT and that confuses MakeMKV.

Probably, the easiest way to "fix" that is to add a "Ignore4GbWarning" configuration option to MakeMKV, so it will try to create a file even if the filesystem reports itself as FAT. Other option is to recognize a macdrive, but I have no idea how to do it.

[ToxicDreamz]

I did as you suggested and it seems to work fine that way, but I think I'll stick to just using it in OS X. Thanks for all the thoughts/suggestions.