NTFS advice, anyone with experience.

[milesdavis]

Hey All --


Looking at making the leap from a life of Windows to a MBP. My only concern at this point are all my external drives, filled with my work + content, which are all formatted NTFS.

The idea of re-formating them, when I will be using windows from time to time, is a daunting and unrealistic task.

I know there are some options for writing NTFS on a Mac, but how reliable are they? I know Paragon NTFS has gotten some mention on these forums, but it seems kind of hit and miss.

Is it remotely reasonable to consider keeping my external drives formatted NTFS in the world of Mac?

Thanks in advance - MD

 

[cohibadad]

if you are just reading the NTFS it's no problem. You can write to the NTFS too but if the data is pretty valuable I'd have a backup.

 

[scienide09]

You can try dumping your files into a temporary folder on your Mac, reformatting the external(s) as FAT32, and then transferring the files back to the external(s).

FAT32 isn't as efficient as NTFS, but this is a great way of getting around the read/write problem of Macs to a Windows-formatted drive.

One caution: the FAT32 filesystem has some weird filesize restrictions. (I think it's 4GB.) If you have a lot of large files that you'll need to move around, the FAT32 option may not be for you.

 

[milesdavis]

Thanks for the responses.

I do alot of video work, so I definitely have files with that 4GB issue. Generally speaking, I keep my work files on an external drive, so I can move them around if needed. Are there any reliable solutions for reading the Mac format [sorry, can't remember it HFS?] on a PC?

Thanks again - MD

 

[zioxide]

Just copy the data around to different drives until you get them all formatted to HFS+. Then if you need to access them from your windows machine just go over LAN.

 

[stainlessliquid]

macdrive is great for HFS+ in windows. They dont have a 64bit version though, which pisses me off since I wanted to use Vista 64.