Enable NTFS Write support on Mac OS X El Capitan

http://www.tuxera.com/products/tuxera-ntfs-for-mac/

The free version is only for people who have purchased Seagate drives. I don't know if it only counts for certain models. Just for the heck of it, I tried the free version a month or so ago. While I do have Windows on another partition, write access still didn't work because it wasn't a Seagate drive Windows was on.

that can not be accommodated by EXFat or FAT32

FAT32 does indeed have a pretty restrictive limit (4 GB). Which in the time it was released, there were no such things as HD movie files and other items that routinely go way over 4 GB in size.

exFAT can handle anything NTFS or ReFS can, as far as size. I know I don't have anything over 1 exabyte (1 million TB) in size. 🙂

Thanks.

I think the solution lies in one of two possible 3rd party software purchases.

With so many drives going back to 2005, I can't simply copy / paste them to other drives, so will have to have something installed so I can read them.

With some being HD x, some y, some z, though I read that Seagate software works well, but not on others' drives I am left with no other avenues.

Thanks

T

ExFat is not supported in XP unless you patch from MS, it is not part of SP 3.

If you don't need the device to connect directly to a Windows computer you get no benefit from remaining in any Windows native format on your Mac.

Kurt Lang wrote:

that can not be accommodated by EXFat or FAT32

FAT32 does indeed have a pretty restrictive limit (4 GB). Which in the time it was released, there were no such things as HD movie files and other items that routinely go way over 4 GB in size.

exFAT can handle anything NTFS or ReFS can, as far as size. I know I don't have anything over 1 exabyte (1 million TB) in size. 🙂

But exFat is less reliable than FAT (it only has one allocation table) so it is an unwise choice.

Hmm. I wonder what happened to the post I made about 20 minutes ago? I don't know what could have possibly been wrong with it. It's been mentioned and discussed hundreds of times on these forums (the NTFS Terminal hack).

Didn't know that about exFAT. Being named FAT (File Allocation Table), I figured the designation meant just what it implies. It's an extension of FAT.

Well, apparently not. It's a similar name only. As described on Wikipedia, It is loosely based on the File Allocation Table architecture, but incompatible, proprietary and protected by patents. So no actual relationship to the original FAT at all. exFAT doesn't even support the MS-DOS original FAT specification of 8.3 files names.

And it only has one file allocation table, no redundancy. (which makes recovery difficult) it was designed as a cheap and efficient solution for short term storage (digital cameras particularly) its not good for a backup medium.

I believe it came about as viable solution for digital camera storage was needed, storage which is (a) cheap and (b) short term. Thus its use on CF cards. It is fairly unreliable, if the size limit is not a problem FAT32 is a better system.

"...losing everything on your NTFS drive..."

That as well. It was assumed most folks should be aware of that but, definitely a wrong assumption.

From numerous years of being subjected to the inefficiencies of MS products (lost projects due to unexpected app errors, failure to meet deadlines due to errors -- OS/app freezes, crashes and the list goes on with over 25 years of grievances) I'd probably be more concerned about that, "losing everything on" an NTFS drive due to alleged shortcuts, while in a hurry and failing to back that data up.

Your response lacks any objectivity, the issue at hand is that most computers in the world run a flavor of windows and sometimes you just need to share files between them. OSX being the one with less systems should at least allow for that, as simple as that. Also, in my personal requirement, I need to copy some big video files to play on my Bluray player, but it only supports FAT and NTFS file systems, ExFAT is not an option and so far I haven't found any of the shelf bluray player that supports HFS. So yes I think Apple should add compatibility for that and for Ext3 & Ext4 filesystems so all common Operating Systems can interact with less pain, they charge enough for their under-spec just good looking computers to incorporate that. That is one of the reasons I am seriously considering going back to windows after 20 years with Apple.

Before anything, I know FAT is supported by OSX but the files I am trying to store are 35 and 40Gb each so FAT is not an option.

They're slowly getting there, but will take years before all software for the Mac is working as Apple is pushing vendors to do.

Support for .3 or .4 character file name extensions came along with Unix with the very first version of OS X, as did basic support for a three button wheel mouse. However, just coming from OS 9, Apple couldn't just do a full switch to a Windows style OS. All Mac apps and files used Type and Creator codes in the resource to signify what they were to the system. You couldn't just toss those out without making every Mac user out there flaming mad.

In Snow Leopard, Apple officially dropped Type and Creator codes and vendors were supposed to start using file name extensions. They're also supposed to use Uniform Type Identifiers to avoid the Windows issue of a specific extension being stuck to only one app. In Windows, an .eps file can only be assigned to one app, no matter which of multiple apps it may have come from. Output an .eps from Photoshop? Too bad, it's still going to open in Illustrator when you double click it if Illustrator is what you assigned .eps to. With Uniform Type Identifiers, an .eps saved from Photoshop will open in Photoshop, or whichever app created it despite all of them using .eps as the extension. Though you can screw that up yourself by assigning a file type to a specific app. Then OS X will open any file with that extension in the app you chose. You can also reset the file association database if you want to, or need to.

Anyway, Apple appears to be working towards a single fork system. They had to shoehorn in a dual fork system for OS X in the first place since Unix itself doesn't support it. With the original release of the CC apps from Adobe, they no longer save a resource fork with any files. That at Apple's own request as the resource fork itself has been deprecated. So expect as some point in the future for the dual fork file system Apple has always used to someday disappear. For now, it will still recognize and read Type and Creator codes if the file has no extension. But that will also break the day Apple goes to a single fork system.

This is pretty annoying how the "World's Best Operating System" cannot write to one of the most common file systems out there. I understand that Apple wants to be a snob and push people to use hfs partitions, which is fine.

Lacking basic NTFS write support only makes me want to go back to using Linux and Windows.

And the world's most used OS can't write to an Apple formatted drive, OR even read one! What snobs those folks are at Microsoft.

Apple doesn't license HFS to anyone, just as MS doesn't license NTFS to anyone. Apple at least took the time to figure out how to read an NTFS drive. Though that ability may have come along with BSD Unix OS X sits on top of.

But regardless, nice of you to complain about Apple not doing something that MS doesn't, either.

And the best advice to folks who think this way ("...makes me want to go back to using Linux and Windows...") is to go back to Windows, since those thoughts strongly imply that they have selected the wrong operating system entirely.

We switched over to Apple more than 9 years ago, after being subjected to the most inefficient operating systems and applications from an arrogant company for more than 20 years (20 years of pure administrative agony and torture) and wouldn't trade that 9 years of productivity for anything. As vendors in enterprise networked office systems, we unfortunately were forced to inherit the burden of resolving Windows issues (again, enterprise level) all too frequently (almost every major corporate installation), since Windows refused to acknowledge that their OSs, apps or platforms could be the culprits.

Further, it is Microsoft who is the "unfriendly" organization with its aging, dinosauric NTFS file system (23 years ancient; 30+ years considering that the NT system bowered most of its features from OS/2) , a proprietary system. Even mounting newer NTFS volumes in older Windows versions (and visa versa obviously) is a convoluted, time consuming and extremely cumbersome process at best. Additionally, the new file system MS began working on more than 4 years ago, ReFS, intended to resolve many of the well-hidden (from the general public) reliability, management, compatibility, etc issues is in fact encountering more and more issues as MS attempts to develop that system (near maximum disk capacity resulting in massive failures, possibly very serious disk redundancy conversion issues, unrecoverable/repairable ReFS failures and the list goes on).

No, the advantage of having full compatibility on OS X with an ancient, problematic and unreliable file system, NTFS, is FAR outweighed by the amazing productivity we (and our clients) have attained since leaving, running away from MS.

Again, the best advice we can offer to those who question the administrative and productive viabilities of Apple's OS is to either stay with MS or go back to MS. If those thoughts of abandoning OS X for Multiple Sclerosis ("Windowless") are even faint echos in Apple users' minds, then they have chosen the wrong company, an entirely wrong OS. If there's a slight hint of bitterness in these comments toward Microsoft, well, after more than 30 year of abuse, yeah, there's probably a great deal of pent up bitterness and hostility, considering the extensive, profusive loss in productivity and being forced to compensate for Microsoft's known issues (incompatible, unreliable, very fragile OSs, apps and file systems all the way up through large corporate enterprise).