Mac Reading NTFS Drives

RogersDA

Considering a mac pro purchase. On my current PC I have two Seagate external drives for backup purposes and which are formated NTFS. They are firewire capable/usb capable.

Would a mac straight-out-of-the-box be able to read these NTFS-formatted drives (via firewire or usb), or do I need to add/install specific software to do that?

Also, can I still use them for backup purposes? If so what software is recommended to do daily backups?

wxwax

I want to hear this answer.

My understanding is that a Mac can read, but can't write to, an NTFS drive.

pathfinder

A Mac can read an NTFS drive - it can even write to it I believe.

It can also format an NTFS formatted drive drive to an Apple drive. :

You cannot boot a Mac from an NTFS formatted drive however unless the new Intel Macs are different. Not sure about this 100%.

For B/U on my MACs I use Super Duper from www.shirt-pocket.com

Great software, and inexpensive too!

RogersDA

Thanks for the information.

DavidTO

pathfinder wrote:

A Mac can read an NTFS drive - it can even write to it I believe.

It can also format an NTFS formatted drive drive to an Apple drive. :

You cannot boot a Mac from an NTFS formatted drive however unless the new Intel Macs are different. Not sure about this 100%.

For B/U on my MACs I use Super Duper from www.shirt-pocket.com

Great software, and inexpensive too!

SuperDuper! I second that recommendation. Great software, active developer, who's on top of it.

Here's a quote from this PDF.

Removable media and devices
A variety of other removable media and devices can be used to exchange files between
Mac and Windows systems, including Iomega Zip disks, USB disk-on-key devices, and
removable (external) FireWire and USB hard drives. For best compatibility, these devices
should be formatted using the FAT32 file system, which is supported by both Mac OS X
and Windows. Mac OS X also supports the ability to read files from devices that use the
NTFS file system format.

wxwax

Hmmm, I see it says "read", but no mention of write.

pathfinder

I see that Sid.

I was rummaging around here looking for an external drive that was still in a Windows format and I have converted all my external drives to MAC, so I could not run a test to verify.

Sorry for the misinformation.

Mike Lane

I can read and write to an NTFS external drive both plugged in via USB and over the network just fine.

Poseidon

I moved a couple of internal HD's to my new Mac Pro that were formatted NTFS, and like the others have mentioned, I could read them just fine, however I could not write. My solution was to copy the data from those drives onto a OS X drive, then I used Disk Utility and re-formatted the drives for OS X, and then finally moved the Data back to the original drives. It was a tedious process, but well worth it in my opinion.

I am 100% satisfied with my new Mac purchase, and I owe a lot of my satisfaction to the Mac guru's here on DGrin! I hope one day to be as proficient on a Mac as they are!

RogersDA

pathfinder wrote:

I was rummaging around here looking for an external drive that was still in a Windows format and I have converted all my external drives to MAC, so I could not run a test to verify.

This is actually what I think I want to do. Hook up the external drives - copy the data, and reformat to MAC, and then move the files back via a backup.

wxwax

Poseidon wrote:

I moved a couple of internal HD's to my new Mac Pro that were formatted NTFS, and like the others have mentioned, I could read them just fine, however I could not write. My solution was to copy the data from those drives onto a OS X drive, then I used Disk Utility and re-formatted the drives for OS X, and then finally moved the Data back to the original drives. It was a tedious process, but well worth it in my opinion.

I am 100% satisfied with my new Mac purchase, and I owe a lot of my satisfaction to the Mac guru's here on DGrin! I hope one day to be as proficient on a Mac as they are!

Thanks Mike. I think you mentioned that before, I think your post is what I was trying to remember.

CatOne

wxwax wrote:

Hmmm, I see it says "read", but no mention of write.

OS X support for NTFS is read-only, as others have noted.

Amit Singh, who wrote a ~1700 page tome on the internals of OS X, from which one of my kernel engineering friends noted "Holy crap, he knows more about the internals of the OS than many of the engineers!" did a port of FUSE to OS X and released it as MacFUSE, which provides read/write support for NTFS. There's an article about it here:

http://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifehack/how-to-read-and-write-ntfs-windows-partition-on-mac-os-x.html

And if you feel like experiementing, go ahead.

For the OP's request, though, I'd think read-only support should be sufficient :-)

Mike Lane

CatOne wrote:

OS X support for NTFS is read-only, as others have noted.

Amit Singh, who wrote a ~1700 page tome on the internals of OS X, from which one of my kernel engineering friends noted "Holy crap, he knows more about the internals of the OS than many of the engineers!" did a port of FUSE to OS X and released it as MacFUSE, which provides read/write support for NTFS. There's an article about it here:

http://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifehack/how-to-read-and-write-ntfs-windows-partition-on-mac-os-x.html

And if you feel like experiementing, go ahead.

For the OP's request, though, I'd think read-only support should be sufficient :-)

So I can't actually read and write to the NTFS drive that I'm reading and writing to nearly every day?

ivar

Mike Lane wrote:

So I can't actually read and write to the NTFS drive that I'm reading and writing to nearly every day?

seems like it

I can't write to an NTFS disk either. If I attach it to another computer (pc), and access it over the network, I can of course. But plugging it in directly, I can only read. FAT32 or 16 would work probably. You have some conversion software running or something?

Mike Lane

ivar wrote:

seems like it

I can't write to an NTFS disk either. If I attach it to another computer (pc), and access it over the network, I can of course. But plugging it in directly, I can only read. FAT32 or 16 would work probably. You have some conversion software running or something?

Nope nothing at all. I just plug it in with usb and it's good to go.

wxwax

Mike Lane wrote:

So I can't actually read and write to the NTFS drive that I'm reading and writing to nearly every day?

Huh. No corruption, no problems?

RogersDA

Found this archived post regarding limited writing ability to USB-mounted nTFS drives:

http://forums.macosxhints.com/archive/index.php/t-26759.html

DavidTO

Sounds like it's a good idea to avoid NTFS on a Mac.

CatOne

Mike Lane wrote:

So I can't actually read and write to the NTFS drive that I'm reading and writing to nearly every day?

I dunno. Support is read-only, so I'm really not sure what's going on.

From Apple's Knowledge Base:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=75320

Mac OS X 10.3 and 10.4 work with local NTFS-formatted volumes. The volume will be read-only.

Warning: NTFS formatted drives cannot be used in a Macintosh (except as read-only with Mac OS X 10.3 and 10.4 as noted above). If you attempt to use a NTFS formatted disk, upon starting up the Mac OS will prompt you to format the drive. Do not format the drive, doing so will erase the contents of the drive. If you have an NTFS formatted disk, you must use another method to transfer the data from the PC to the Macintosh.

Sounds like there's something wonky going on with your system -- either you installed a driver you don't remember installing, or your USB drive is doing something goofy to actually let you write to NTFS. I cannot think of what that might be.

Mike Lane

I thought maybe I was going crackers or something. But I double checked the drive. It is definitely NTFS. I definitely used it plugged directly in to my MBP via usb. It was one of the first things I did with my mac so I didn't download any odd drivers or anything first. Actually at the time I wasn't sure if it would even work or if I should attempt to plug it in. But I thought aw what the heck, I'll just see if it works. So I plugged it in and it was nearly instantly recognized and I was able to read and write vast amounts of data to and fro. Nothing at all has been corrupted. The transfer was quite speedy.

I'll take that kind of wonky any day. The hard drive gods were smiling at me I guess.

Stustaff

CatOne wrote:

I dunno. Support is read-only, so I'm really not sure what's going on.

From Apple's Knowledge Base:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=75320

Mac OS X 10.3 and 10.4 work with local NTFS-formatted volumes. The volume will be read-only.

Warning: NTFS formatted drives cannot be used in a Macintosh (except as read-only with Mac OS X 10.3 and 10.4 as noted above). If you attempt to use a NTFS formatted disk, upon starting up the Mac OS will prompt you to format the drive. Do not format the drive, doing so will erase the contents of the drive. If you have an NTFS formatted disk, you must use another method to transfer the data from the PC to the Macintosh.

Sounds like there's something wonky going on with your system -- either you installed a driver you don't remember installing, or your USB drive is doing something goofy to actually let you write to NTFS. I cannot think of what that might be.

Hold on a second that says IN A macintosh? I use a USB drive that is NTFS, is maybe a USB drive ok/excempt? but an internal HD isnt?

wxwax

Stustaff wrote:

but an internal HD isnt?

That's what I was wondering when I read it.

Mike Lane

wxwax wrote:

That's what I was wondering when I read it.

yeah, it talks about booting from the NTFS drive. Not something you'd do with an external drive.

DavidTO

Mike Lane wrote:

yeah, it talks about booting from the NTFS drive. Not something you'd do with an external drive.

You might do...

pathfinder

Is there a difference with an Intel based Mac like a MBP, and a PowerPC based Mac perhaps Mike?

Mike Lane

pathfinder wrote:

Is there a difference with an Intel based Mac like a MBP, and a PowerPC based Mac perhaps Mike?

That's as good of a guess as any