OSX Lion and NTFS Network drive...?

[fatdawg]

Let me start by saying that I have searched the internet and several forums but have read conflicting info, and most of it is a year old or so. Hence the new post...

I currently have a Windows PC running Windows 7. I have a hard drive on the network - its a networked media tank, the HDX1000... essentially a knock-off of the Popcorn Hour - and the hard drive is formatted NTFS. I am able to use it as a networked storage drive for anything from music to photos to docs, and my PC "sees" it as the z-drive.

I am thinking of getting a Mac - either the Mac Mini or the iMac, haven't decided, but leaning towards the iMac - anyway, I want to be able to put all of the files that are on my PC that I will want on my Mac (music, movies, photos, docs, etc) onto the above mentioned networked drive, then when I get my Mac, copy them from the networked drive to the Mac (for better performance rather than accessing them across the network all the time). Basically I want to use the networked drive as temporary storage to transfer the files from one computer to the other.

Some posts seem to say that OS X Lion can read NTFS but not write to them, others say you need additional software.

I am just barely tech savvy enough to get myself into trouble, but not out of it. And I want to make sure that the Mac will "play nice" with the network drive before dropping a thousand bucks on it and not being able to smoothly get my stuff from my PC to the new Mac. I could just hook up my PC's drive to the new Mac, but it is also NTFS so I will have the same problem.

I've also read that Macs play nice with FAT32 drives out of the box. I don't suppose you can convert a drive from NTFS to FAT 32 without reformatting and loosing all data?

 

[posguy99]

The format of the network volume doesn't make any difference.

You're not asking the Mac to write to NTFS, you're asking the device that actually hosts the drive to write to NTFS.

You're fine.

 

[rowley]

I have a 2tb external drive (NTFS partition), on a Windows XP server. Its shared and is written to from my MBP.
Works over network absolutely fine.

 

[fatdawg]

The format of the network volume doesn't make any difference.

You're not asking the Mac to write to NTFS, you're asking the device that actually hosts the drive to write to NTFS.

You're fine.

Excellent... but that got me thinking... if I DO want the Mac to be able to write to the network drive (either for Time Machine backup or as additional storage) will I need extra software? No big deal if I do, and if it's not too expensive, just want to know going into what I will need.

Of course rowley said his works like that just fine... so I guess all I need to work on now is the "permission slip" from the wife.

Thanks!

 

[cocoy.andaya]

What software do you suggest to move the files from windows external hard drive to mac? Thanks

 

[DavoteK]

Paragon NTFS, costs about $20, but means that any external drives you attach can be read and written to without issue.

Over the network, it doesn't matter what file format the drive is, but locally, you're gonna need an NTFS driver. Paragon is what I have seen recommended a few times on here and its been well worth the purchase.