External HDD on MBP question

[Bmoney017]

So i've had my MBP for a little over a month (I got it the day they updated it on June 5th) and it is my first mac. I haven't had many problems, but when I plug in my external HDD, thats where the problems start. It is NTFS formatted and I thought that I would never get a mac so no need to do a FAT32 format. So when I plug in the drive, it shows up on the desktop. When I go to open it, no files show up; it is completely blank. It shows how much space is available at the bottom, but no folders show up. I dont need to write anything on the disk, I just need to be able to pull up the files. Can someone please give me some guidance of what to do. Thanks for the help.

[deadpixels]

your mac should be able to read your ntfs formatted drive, you could try to install windows (sorry for suggesting a solution involving window$) and see if it reads you drive.

[Sbrocket]

The latest version of Tiger (well before that, but whatever) does have NTFS read support, but not write. I can't explain why exactly your drive does not appear to have any files on it in Finder with the information given, but Mac OS X is definitely recognizing the partition as an NTFS-formatted volume if it is appearing on your desktop as a mounted drive.

The only possible solution I can think of is to go ahead and try a different NTFS solution. Take a look at Google's MacFUSE (here: http://code.google.com/p/macfuse/) and follow this simple Lifehacker how-to (here: http://tinyurl.com/2ygz38), maybe that'll work out for you. I've used MacFUSE for other applications (not NTFS R/W so far), but it seems to be a popular solution for getting full access to NTFS drives and I haven't noticed reports of any major problems with its implementation. Good luck!

[Bmoney017]

thanks for the help. Ill give that a try Sbrocket.

haha sorry but I really dont want to use windows again deadpixels. Only after a month of use, its amazing how different windows feels.

I think what I am going to do is go to the apple store and ask them what the deal is.

[Bmoney017]

One question about macfuse, Do I need to have bootcamp?

[Sbrocket]

One question about macfuse, Do I need to have bootcamp?

MacFUSE is not related to Boot Camp in any way.

[Bmoney017]

ok so i am really trying hard to do this all on my own, but its not working. So I used the site you gave me, and i downloaded macfuse and NTFS-3G, however I must not be doing something right because after I do what I think is the installation, and when I restart my computer, NTFS-3G says that it cant install because macfuse isnt installed. What am i doing wrong?

[Bmoney017]

ok i finally got it to work. I had to change the macfuse file name so "core" was not in it anymore