I discovered FAT32 has 4 GB file size limitation

So I recently purchased a Western Digital Green External Hard Disk that was pre-formatted FAT32 to connect to my Apple TV.

FAT32 is definitely the most portable of file-systems in terms of being supported by pretty much every major OS.

Unfortunately I got hit by the 4GB file size limitation.

I've ripped most of my DVDs to .ISO files. These are almost always over 4 gigabytes in file size.

So I decided to convert my external hard drive to HFS+.

Once again, I have no Apple computer, so I needed to do this directly from the Apple TV:-

After having the USB patch enabled on the Apple TV and connecting the external hard disk I see :-

-bash-2.05b$ diskutil list
/dev/disk0
#: type name size identifier
0: GUID_partition_scheme *37.3 GB disk0
1: EFI 34.0 MB disk0s1
2: Apple_Recovery 400.0 MB disk0s2
3: Apple_HFS OSBoot 900.0 MB disk0s3
4: Apple_HFS Media 35.8 GB disk0s4
/dev/disk1
#: type name size identifier
0: FDisk_partition_scheme *931.5 GB disk1
1: Windows_FAT_32 My Book 931.3 GB disk1s1


-bash-2.05b$ diskutil info /dev/disk1
Device Node: /dev/disk1
Device Identifier: disk1
Mount Point:
Volume Name:

Partition Type: FDisk_partition_scheme
Bootable: Not bootable
Media Type: Generic
Protocol: USB
SMART Status: Not Supported

Total Size: 931.5 GB
Free Space: 0.0 B

Read Only: No
Ejectable: Yes
OS 9 Drivers: No
Low Level Format: Not Supported

-bash-2.05b$ diskutil info disk1s1
Device Node: /dev/disk1s1
Device Identifier: disk1s1
Mount Point: /Volumes/My Book
Volume Name: My Book

File System: MS-DOS FAT32
Partition Type: Windows_FAT_32
Bootable: Not bootable
Media Type: Generic
Protocol: USB
SMART Status: Not Supported

Total Size: 931.3 GB
Free Space: 909.8 GB

Read Only: No
Ejectable: Yes




-bash-2.05b$ mount
/dev/disk0s3 on / (local, journaled)
devfs on /dev (local)
fdesc on /dev (union)
on /.vol
/dev/disk0s4 on /mnt (local, journaled)
/dev/disk1s1 on /mnt/Scratch/Volumes/My Book (local)


To reformat as HFS+ with volume label "WDGreen" using case sensitive file names and journaling.

sudo -s

umount /dev/disk1s1

diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk1

diskutil eraseDisk "Case-sensitive Journaled HFS+" WDGreen /dev/disk1

-bash-2.05b$ diskutil list
/dev/disk0
#: type name size identifier
0: GUID_partition_scheme *37.3 GB disk0
1: EFI 34.0 MB disk0s1
2: Apple_Recovery 400.0 MB disk0s2
3: Apple_HFS OSBoot 900.0 MB disk0s3
4: Apple_HFS Media 35.8 GB disk0s4
/dev/disk1
#: type name size identifier
0: GUID_partition_scheme *931.5 GB disk1
1: EFI 34.0 MB disk1s1
2: Apple_HFS WDGreen 931.5 GB disk1s2


-bash-2.05b$ diskutil info disk1s2
Device Node: /dev/disk1s2
Device Identifier: disk1s2
Mount Point: /Volumes/WDGreen
Volume Name: WDGreen

File System: Case-sensitive Journaled HFS+
Journal size 81920 k at offset 0x1d1e000
Owners: Enabled
Partition Type: Apple_HFS
Bootable: Is bootable
Media Type: Generic
Protocol: USB
SMART Status: Not Supported

Total Size: 931.5 GB
Free Space: 931.3 GB

Read Only: No
Ejectable: Yes



-bash-2.05b$ mount
/dev/disk0s3 on / (local, journaled)
devfs on /dev (local)
fdesc on /dev (union)
on /.vol
/dev/disk0s4 on /mnt (local, journaled)
/dev/disk1s2 on /mnt/Scratch/Volumes/WDGreen (local, journaled)


Now I can upload files greater than 4GB in size to external disk on Apple TV.