NTFS writing from macOS - best practice?

[Cattywampus_]

Hi there,

I just got around to installing the latest version of macOS on my PC. It has been a while since I messed around in the Hackintosh department, and in that time I have upgraded my basic Dropbox account to Dropbox Plus.

As a result of this, I now have to store my Dropbox files on larger hard drives rather than on my 128Gb SSD OS drives. Since I am dual-booting my PC with Windows and macOS, I don't really want to have 2 copies of the Dropbox folder on 2 partitions on the same drive; it just doesn't seem logical. So my plan is to simply have the Dropbox clients on both OS's point to the same folder.

Obviously there is the issue of what file systems each of the OS's can read. My opinion is that it is better for me to enable NTFS writing in macOS rather than enabling HFS+ read/write in Windows. I have used 3G-NTFS in the past but that hasn't been updated in a long time. So I researched other ways of enabling NTFS writing in macOS.

I came across a simple terminal command that enables 'Apple’s Experimental NTFS-Write Support'. I am concerned at the word experimental. Has anyone used this method and had success or failure with it?

Am I best stumping up the cash for a paid NTFS option?

Help appreciated.

 

[zaxven]

terminal commands are tedious process at times, ain't automated plus each & every time has to be invoked. it's like hit and miss thing for many external hdds.

After introduction of APFS, these commands have stopped working, free option - ntfs-3g is not working.. paid options like Tuxera & Paragon have to be allowed manually in gatekeeper to function. (haven't tried Fuse). imho paid functionality is better at least you have support and less risk of data loss. If i remember correctly Boot camp does allow you see Mac drive contents in read mode. you can move your data around one way. (and in past, it did allow from mac to copy data in windows partition - sorry not sure if it still exists, haven't used win machines/boot camp in years).

Windows also has iCloud drive option - may be it will be of some help. give a try !!!!

 

[Cattywampus_]

Yeah I've decided to sack the idea off and just have 2 copies of the Dropbox folder on different partitions, one NTFS one HFS+.

Simpler that way. Cheers.

 

[Sedulous]

Could you use exFAT?

 

[throAU]

Best practice: don't.

Use another filesystem or transfer data via the network if you can.

NTFS is proprietary and continually evolving with new versions or updates to Windows. Any third party implementation is reverse engineered and may break or corrupt the filesystem as Microsoft add new features on the windows side.

That goes for free implementations, paid third party, Linux, macOS, etc.

Just steer clear if you can, use NTFS at your own risk, etc. ExFAT is a decent option if you must have the same drive read/written by both Windows and Mac. A NAS is a better option though. Or network transfer between the Windows and Mac machines, if they are not the same machine.