MacFuse + NTFS-3G

If any one has ever had a PC and like most PC’s you probably had a hard drive. On that hard drive you may have had some Data. Like me i had Data on a Drive that was formatted in Windows NTFS. I also use a Mac at work. OS x is able to read FAT or File Allocation Table as i just learned. But im not going to explain the reasons on why NTFS is better than FAT16 or 32 or vice versa.

OS X is only able to look at a NTFS drive, it can not read data nor can it write to it. I saw in the “System/Library/Filesystems” profiles for other formats. I did some Googling and found an NTFS-3G package for Mac OS X, featuring automount of volumes and good integration with OS X.

In order to install NTFS-3D i needed to download and install MacFUSE. MacFUSE allows you to extend Mac OS X’s native file handling capabilities via 3rd-party file systems. MacFUSE on its own allows for command line access, not my thing.

After a reboot i tested the NFTS drive and was able to do all actions, Read/Write/Delete with no problems.

One thing to note if you have a hot swap drive on Windows it will not open on OSx unless you actually eject it, unplugging it will cause a “Unclean” removal and OSx will not read it. it must me Ejected in order to work!

I have not done a Speed test but i was pleased 400mb in ~ 1min.

http://code.google.com/p/macfuse/
http://macntfs-3g.blogspot.com/2008/12/ntfs-3g-15130.html