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mrgreen4242

macrumors 601
Original poster
Feb 10, 2004
4,377
9
I've got a FW drive with a 400gb NTFS partition on it. The drive mounts and the Mac can see SOME of the files, and read them just fine. However, there is about 60gb of data that are just missing on the Mac (10.3.X - not to sure, not my machine) that show up just fine on a Windows machine.

Any ideas?
 

khisayruou

macrumors 6502a
Aug 21, 2004
539
0
Macs can't read NTFS partitions correctly.
Im surprised you even get to see 'some' files AND read them!
Anyways, if you want a hdd to work between macs and pcs without problems, format it to fat32.
 

mrgreen4242

macrumors 601
Original poster
Feb 10, 2004
4,377
9
khisayruou said:
Macs can't read NTFS partitions correctly.
Im surprised you even get to see 'some' files AND read them!
Anyways, if you want a hdd to work between macs and pcs without problems, format it to fat32.

That's what I suggested. Just for informational purposes, I work for a non-profit and one of the things we do is produce a weekly TV show on PBS (in Michigan). The show is edited on Macs (or course), and the external HDD was footage from a sponser/partner for some upcoming episodes.

I suggested he format it into 2 partitions, one fat32 and the other NTFS, if not make the whole drive FAT32.

I've not had TOO many troubles with NTFS on OS X (reading anyways) but never could write them correctly.

Thanks a ton!
 

khisayruou

macrumors 6502a
Aug 21, 2004
539
0
Yea, OSX has made improvements at reading NTFS. But in my experience it still goofs up a lot. OSX however will NOT write to NTFS.
 

mrgreen4242

macrumors 601
Original poster
Feb 10, 2004
4,377
9
khisayruou said:
Yea, OSX has made improvements at reading NTFS. But in my experience it still goofs up a lot. OSX however will NOT write to NTFS.

I assumed as much. I figured they are using the same OSS driver that most Linux distros use for NTFS support. Windows users really need to revolt over that one... sure, use a proprietary format for your default, but at least make an open source, free reader for it available!

Er, now that I say that, OS X just uses ext2 or 3 right? Not some crazy Mac specific file system?
 

topgunn

macrumors 68000
Nov 5, 2004
1,555
2,059
Houston
My problem with FAT32 (well, the major problem) is that it cannot contain a single file larger than 4GB. I transfer large files back and forth between my computers often and FAT32 and NTFS were automatically out of the question. So, I got MacDrive instead.
 

mrichmon

macrumors 6502a
Jun 17, 2003
873
3
mrgreen4242 said:
Er, now that I say that, OS X just uses ext2 or 3 right? Not some crazy Mac specific file system?

No, the default OS X file system is HFS+ an Apple invented filesystem. However HFS+ has an open source implementation available as part of Darwin.
 

mrgreen4242

macrumors 601
Original poster
Feb 10, 2004
4,377
9
mrichmon said:
No, the default OS X file system is HFS+ an Apple invented filesystem. However HFS+ has an open source implementation available as part of Darwin.

:eek: Oh well, at least they have an OSS implementation! Thanks for the help everyone!
 
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