Accessing NTFS Drives

I have a home network as follows:

Mac mini, hooked up to TV
NTFS formatted Maxtor USB external hard drive
Wireless network
Dell desktop
Dell laptop
MacBook

I have just got the MacBook, and was trying to set it up to see the USB hard drive, attached to the Mac Mini

Could not do it

Called Mac support, and they said that although the Mac mini can see the directly-connected drive, other Macs cannot see it (more precisely, connect to it). He said if iy was FAT32, no problem ... but that others out there may have a workaround for this.

If I hang the USB hard drive off the Dell desktop, I can connect fine from the Macbook.

I have also hung it off a Buffalo Terrastation, and that works fine.

Anyone got any workarounds on this .. the reason I need it connected directly to the MacMini is that it has media files on, and if i try to play to the TV by streaming over the wireless network I get stutter and lip-sync problems with movies.

If connected directly to MacMini these problems disappear.

Any thoughts ?

Tks

NTFS support is currently not really built into mac OS X properly (read support is supposedly there, but for me it's been hit & miss at best).

There was an article on a new ntfs driver with full read/write support for linux that will purportedly be ported to OS X at some time...
So hang in there and all might work soon...

Aptmunich said:

NTFS support is currently not really built into mac OS X properly (read support is supposedly there, but for me it's been hit & miss at best).

There was an article on a new ntfs driver with full read/write support for linux that will purportedly be ported to OS X at some time...
So hang in there and all might work soon...

Click to expand...

Thanks. I guess my Q. now is more for curiosity, by what is the technical issue on this ? While the Macs may be nice in many departments, this type of issue is a real pain for those switching or looking to integrate Macs into their existing infrastructure, "home network" though it may be. :doctor: http://www.mac-forums.com/forums/newreply.php?do=newreply&p=235399#
Doctor

That is interesting that you have had issues reading NTFS drives on a Mac. Every time I have tried with external USB2 drives with NTFS all my Macs with Tiger have had no problems mounting or reading the NTFS drive. Of course OSX can not currently Write to NTFS, but I have never had a problem reading from any external formatted with NTFS.

Thanks for the info on the new NTFS driver for Linux. That is good news and I am sure it will find it's way into OSX eventually.

Why not use Fat32?

mynameis said:

Why not use Fat32?

Click to expand...

I note the other stated advantages of NTFS (http://www.anandtech.com/guides/viewfaq.html?i=63) .. for what suxh a discussion is worth.

As a practical matter, to change it requires at least 250 MB of space I do not currently have, to back off my NTFS drive, reformat and reload.

You know the Mac ad about all the time it takes to set up a PC, while he goes and goofs off doing something else ... ???

Well that's true - they didn't mention anything about you hooking your mac up to NTFS harddrives did they?

Personally, I just format all my external drives to either FAT32 or HFS+. If a windows machine needs to access them, I'll set up an ethernet share through my macbook.

Edited. I seem to recall reading somewhere that NTFS could be written to, by a Mac, over a network, but I think it had to be through a PC or a Windows based server.

Is it me or was the issue that he couldnt see the drive attached to the mini over the network?

I also format all MY externals FAT 32 or Journalized HFS+ but when working with other peoples drives, I have no control how they are formatted. It's nice that OSX will at least read NTFS for now anyway for the few times I may need to work with a customers drive and not have to fire up a PC to read it.

Northness said:

Thanks. I guess my Q. now is more for curiosity, by what is the technical issue on this ? While the Macs may be nice in many departments, this type of issue is a real pain for those switching or looking to integrate Macs into their existing infrastructure, "home network" though it may be. :doctor: http://www.mac-forums.com/forums/newreply.php?do=newreply&p=235399#
Doctor

Click to expand...

The technical issue is pretty simple. Microsoft in it's un-openness, is not interested in supporting HFS (hence why Windows can't even see a directly connected HFS volume), and does not share much information about their NTFS filesystem. That's why, by default Linux, UNIX and OS X can only read, but not write to NTFS. I think there are some 3rd party solutions, at least for Linux.
If you connect your drive to a PC, and access it over the network, the SMB protocol takes care of the "translation", which enables other systems to write to it, and it also enables Windows to read/write a HFS volume. So integrating Macs into an existing network infrastructure is not really an issue.

Connecting an USB/Firewire device directly to a computer has nothing to do with a network, no matter if it's a home network or any kind of business network.

Newbie here, first post. I ordered a powermac pro yesterday and should get it next week. I think this thread is for me becuase I have a couple of hard drives I would like to write to but unfortunately they are NTFS of course. That would mean I have to transfer them elsewhere and then re format into Fat32? OS X can write on Fat 32 correct? Kinda sucks. I hope the NTFS write integration makes into an OS update soon.

fliP said:

Newbie here, first post. I ordered a powermac pro yesterday and should get it next week. I think this thread is for me becuase I have a couple of hard drives I would like to write to but unfortunately they are NTFS of course. That would mean I have to transfer them elsewhere and then re format into Fat32? OS X can write on Fat 32 correct? Kinda sucks. I hope the NTFS write integration makes into an OS update soon.

Click to expand...

Yes, OS X can write to FAT32. If you plan to use those disks with both Windows and OS X, that's the way to go. Otherwise, you should use HFS.
And for NTFS writing, the lack of it is due to MS politics, so chances are that it won't ever be available, except maybe through a 3rd party developper.
Making NTFS writable on an unsupported OS means reverse engineering the NTFS protocol...something Apple can't do for legal reasons.

Another possibility would be to format them in HFS, connect them to the Mac, put the PC and the Mac on a network. Due to the SMB network protocol, it doesn't matter what physical filesystem is present, you can always read/write.

My problem with Fat32 is it only supports 32Gb partitions IIRC? At least that's what I read somewhere yesterday.
I'm going to have to find a place to dump my 300Gb drive so I can re format it into HFS. Ideally, I would like a format to use that would allow writing by OSX AND WinXP without partition size limitations.

FAT 32 does not have a limit of 32GB, it's XP's formatter that has that limit. The limit of FAT32 is at least 2TB. You can format with a Win 98 or ME boot CD or on OSX even.

Here is a URL that might help.

http://www.allensmith.net/Storage/HDDlimit/FAT32.htm

IIRC FAT-32 does have a file size limit of 4Gb. Not something your going to run into everyday, but for high quality video....

Yes, another one of Microsoft's strange politic ways to limit their users...
Win2k and XP cannot fromat drives bigger than 32GB in FAT32, while older Windows version like Win98 and WinME can. (?!?!?)
Just a reminder, FAT32 is a plain Windows filesystem! So th elimit is n't a technical issue!
Even OS X can format bigger drives...go figure... neye:

If I remember well, the maximum file size for FAT32 is 2GB, not 4GB. Really not good for video editing...

I seem to remember 2GB also as my friend is a pro video editor and he told me anything over 2gb would not save with a FAT32 partition. Some sites on the net do say 4GB though. Unless one is into editing of very large video files, the limit will not affect the more normal user.

Funny thing is in my post I edited and put the info about the file size limit with FAT32 but it never saved! Oh well, thanks Baggss and Avalon for pointing it out.

I guess it depends on what OS you are using...

"FAT partitions are limited in size to a maximum of 4 Gigabytes (GB) under Windows NT and 2 GB in MS-DOS."

It doesn't specify XP or 2K, but I would guess they are the same as NT....

That article is talking about FAT or (FAT16). Not FAT 32. I have a 200GB FAT32 Drive right in front of me. Works in any OS I use.