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drtanz

macrumors member
Original poster
Sep 27, 2012
58
0
Hi I would like to backup my mac to an external ntfs drive (it already has a lot of data on it and I have nowhere to put it in order to format to hfs). Is there any alternative software to time machine for this?
 

GGJstudios

macrumors Westmere
May 16, 2008
44,539
941
Hi I would like to backup my mac to an external ntfs drive (it already has a lot of data on it and I have nowhere to put it in order to format to hfs). Is there any alternative software to time machine for this?
No, you can back up some files to such a drive, but to back up your drive, the drive needs to be HFS+.

HFS+ (Hierarchical File System, a.k.a. Mac OS Extended (Journaled) Don't use case-sensitive)

NTFS (Windows NT File System)
  • Read/Write NTFS from native Windows.
  • Read only NTFS from native Mac OS X
    [*]To Read/Write/Format NTFS from Mac OS X, here are some alternatives:
    • For Mac OS X 10.4 or later (32 or 64-bit), install Paragon ($19.95) (Best Choice for Lion and Mountain Lion)
    • For Mac OS X 10.5 and later, including Lion, FUSE for OS X
    • For 32-bit Mac OS X, install NTFS-3G for Mac OS X (free) (does not work in 64-bit mode)
    • Some have reported problems using Tuxera (approx $36), which is an enhanced version of NTFS-3G with faster performance.
    • Native NTFS support can be enabled in Snow Leopard and later versions, but is not advisable, due to instability.
  • AirPort Extreme (802.11n) and Time Capsule do not support NTFS
  • Maximum file size: 16 TB
  • Maximum volume size: 256TB
  • You can use this format if you routinely share a drive with multiple Windows systems.

exFAT (FAT64)
  • Supported in Mac OS X only in 10.6.5 or later.
  • Not all Windows versions support exFAT. See disadvantages.
  • exFAT (Extended File Allocation Table)
  • AirPort Extreme (802.11n) and Time Capsule do not support exFAT
  • Maximum file size: 16 EiB
  • Maximum volume size: 64 ZiB
  • You can use this format if it is supported by all computers with which you intend to share the drive. See "disadvantages" for details.

FAT32 (File Allocation Table)
  • Read/Write FAT32 from both native Windows and native Mac OS X.
    [*]Maximum file size: 4GB.
  • Maximum volume size: 2TB
  • You can use this format if you share the drive between Mac OS X and Windows computers and have no files larger than 4GB.
 

drtanz

macrumors member
Original poster
Sep 27, 2012
58
0
Right, so you're saying I can still select a number of folders to backup, but not the whole drive (as in no hard drive cloning)?
 

JoelBC

macrumors 6502a
Jun 16, 2012
923
61
I think the one work around is to create a sparse.bundle on your NTFS drive which is then treated as a journaled HFS+ drive...I did this with my NAS but the performance [i.e. write times] were horrible...


Joel
 
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