Native OS X FAT support?

[BeSweeet]

So, my Windows 7 partition is FAT (not FAT32 or NTFS). Does OS X have native read/write support for FAT partitions? I had NTFS-3G + MacFUSE installed since day one, but if I don't need it, I'd like to remove it.

 

[Bengt77]

Before answering your question, I'd like to state that it's not very sensible to install Windows 7 on a FAT partition. Much of the progress Windows has made since Windows 2000 and much of the stability it has gained is due to NTFS. It is just a much better file system than FAT32 could ever be, let alone FAT16. By the way, are you sure it actually is FAT16? I can't imagine Windows 7 would want to run on FAT16...

As for you question: yes, Mac OS X can both read from and write to FAT16 and FAT32 partitions. So in a way you don't need NTFS-3G, but I suggest you keep it installed and reformat your Boot Camp drive. All newer Windows versions run much, much better on NTFS.

 

[Stridder44]

So, my Windows 7 partition is FAT (not FAT32 or NTFS). Does OS X have native read/write support for FAT partitions? I had NTFS-3G + MacFUSE installed since day one, but if I don't need it, I'd like to remove it.

😕 Well that's impossible because 7 (and Vista for that matter) will only install on NTFS.

From a Microsoft article (couldn't find an exact page outlining it for 7, but the same rules would apply):

To perform the Windows Vista installation, the drive on which you want to install Windows Vista must use the NTFS file system.

 

[BeSweeet]

I read an article earlier today that tells you how to enable native NTFS read/write in Snow Leopard without NTFS-3G or MacFUSE. So while I was installing those two things, I noticed that Disk Utility said it was MS-DOS (FAT). When I did a Get Info on my Windows 7 drive on my desktop, it says "NTFS-3g (MacFUSE)". I'm pretty sure it's NTFS now. I was just getting a little bit confused.

Oh wait: Now I remember why I got confused. Here: http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20090913140023382 it says I have to get my UUID for my NTFS partition. But in Disk Utility, it doesn't give me that:

Maybe this is what was causing my VMWare Fusion/Parallels problems...

The last thing I did to this partition was use WinClone (when I made an image of the partition, deleted it, made it bigger, formatted it to NTFS, then restore the image).

 

[Bengt77]

That's quite weird, as on my MacBook Disk Utility definitely identifies my Windows Vista partition as a Windows NT File System (NTFS) volume.

 

[balamw]

That's quite weird, as on my MacBook Disk Utility definitely identifies my Windows Vista partition as a Windows NT File System (NTFS) volume.

Here too. BeSweet, did you use the latest Winclone? I just did something similar on my 13" (backup with Winclone, move and enlarge on a larger drive) and it looks fine as NTFS, but I used the latest Winclone that is Snow Leopard happy.

B

 

[Bengt77]

No, I'm not using Winclone. I've used it in the past, but now it wants to install some software it needs to run, which I won't let it. So now I can't use it anymore. I might try the latest version to see if that doesn't need to install anything extra.

 

[BeSweeet]

So here's where I am now: My W7 partition is now seen as NTFS, and my UUID now shows up in diskutil (it didn't before, so maybe it was a NTFS-3G problem?). I just followed this: http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20090913140023382 and I'm about to restart to see if it works. Right now, I only have read support.