01-02-2010, 06:25 PM

I'm strongly considering getting a Macbook & dumping XP for home use. A big consideration is that I have all my music & a ton of pics on an external hard drive (formatted in NTFS). I keep the ext. drive as a backup, and would like to access the files from the Mac, if not write to the drive as well.

As I Googled one article mentioned using NTFS for Mac so the Macbook can read from & write to the ext. HDD NTFS drive. Is it as easy as it sounds? Anyone here used NTFS for Mac, or have suggestions on this topic?

01-02-2010, 07:01 PM

From my experience, NTFS works fine. Just plug it in, you know?

01-02-2010, 07:46 PM

By default, OS X can only read from a NTFS drive. It can not write to it.

However, there is third party software which can enable read and write access to NTFS. (pay ware) If you purchase a new Mac it will be loaded with OS X Snow Leopard. Snow Leopard can read and write to NTFS, however, it is not turned on by default. You have to turn it on with several terminal commands or use a small utility which will do it for you.

When you purchase your Mac, log back on here and ask about what I mentioned above. Or you can send me forum private mail.

Regards.

01-02-2010, 08:16 PM

Well I switched about 4 months ago and using an external HDD was easier than I imagined. I had a WD Passport drive that I decided to use and just plugged it in. The Mac asked me if I wanted to use it as my Time Machine backup and I just said yes. Time Machine is the easiest and BEST backup software I've ever used. I highly recommend that you use it. It's literally a brainless endeavor, not that I'm suggesting you're brainless. It just so easy that it does everything for you once you get it set up.

01-03-2010, 12:38 PM

Originally Posted by chscag

If you purchase a new Mac it will be loaded with OS X Snow Leopard. Snow Leopard can read and write to NTFS, however, it is not turned on by default. You have to turn it on with several terminal commands or use a small utility which will do it for you.

Are all external hard drives NTFS by default? I have a Hitachi 1TB external hard drive that I'm pretty sure is NTFS. Is it pretty easy to set Snow Leopard to read and write to NTFS (what terminal commands / utility are you talking about)? I always heard that it had to be FAT32 and partitioned in certain sizes.