NTFS formatted USB HDD - can't access the data in OSX

Hi guys

We've got loads of photography on an NTFS formatted external USB2 hard drive.

When I connect it to a G5 in the office, it mounts it and appears on the desktop, but the folders don't appear.

Going to show info on the drive tells me that 75GB is used with 157GB free. And that I've only got read permissions - which is fine.

But I can't even see the folders on there.

Is there any way to access this data on a Mac?

I don't really want to have to initialise the disk and risk losing the data to format it to HFS format or whatever it is that OS X uses.

I'd copy the data to a Mac formatted external drive if I could, using a PC to do the copying - is there a way?

Thanks

Ben

Drives need to be formatted in FAT32 for PC's/Mac's to be able to work with them. Best bet is to copy all of the files off the drive to a PC, format it FAT32, copy them back and then you can work between both

Thanks for the reply

Isn't there a max size for FAT32 partitions though?

I've got about 60GB of pictures and I'm sure the max size is 32GB

wait wait wait

trpnmonkey is right and wrong all at the same time.

If you have an external USB drive formatted in NTFS you should be able to see the files just fine. One thing you want to make sure of is to look and see when you go to open the actual drive, see if you have scroll bars on the sides and bottom. If you do, scroll around or go to VIEW > ARRANGE BY > KIND

Try that and see if they show up.

Now, if you DONT see them, then what you want to do is like tprn said.

Go to a PC, copy the files off of the drive, then take that drive back to the Mac *** if your mac has this ability..i think its only Intel Macs that do..*** format the drive on the Mac with the MS DOS option. That will overcome the size limitation that windows has. That will format it in FAT32. If however, you dont have this option in DISK UTILITY, then you'll need to do it on the PC, which can be tricky at best, and just not possible at worst. Best option is to get something like Partition Magic to format it. I'm not sure why the NTFS files aren't showing up. I'd sugguest you ring apple really quick and find out. Odds are they can tell you in like 3 minutes flat.

Nope that was a Windows thing I believe. Only limit you have is a max file size of 4gb for a file

^ he's right.

its some complicated thing with ntfs being too entrenched in the NT kernal, so the mac can't deal with the data.

fat32 is older, but its a protocol that both systems can read.



something like that.

But I'm pretty sure I've been able to read NTFS drives in the past no problem on OS X.

OSX certainly support NTFS partitions (read only). More details can be found here.