NTFS support for Mac. Ask Question. But I found that my mac cannot read or write on that. So, where are my questions: How can I make my mac read/write the files in an NTFS partition? I have a new 1tb 2.5 drive that I bought to use as time machine. What is the best format for that? Time Machine will not write to an NTFS Volume even if. Great summary. Two comments: 1) I think we (anyone needing to move drives between Mac and PC) should write to Apple and Microsoft and ask for better support for this. Specifically, Apple needs to (license the tech if necessary) allow formatting and writing NTFS. 2) I have a few external drives that I swap on a regular basis between my Mac and PC. They are large drives (120GB, 250GB 400GB). I format those as FAT32, but the key is to format them as FAT32 *on the Mac*, if you want a single full sized partition. In other words, my iTunes collection is about 250GB. Windows XP limits the maximum partition size to 32GB when formatting. However, I can format the drive as a 250GB single FAT32 partition in OS X, copy my entire library, and then Windows XP will handle it just fine. Writing to NTFS has plagued linux users for some time now as the file system is almost entirely proprietary. There are a few programs for a linux that can write to NTFS using the Windows dll driver, but this would not work on Mac (unless it could be recompiled for ppc or support could be added for Intel Macs with some kind of Wine support installed). I would say that Mac doesn't have much of a choice until MS decides to license their filesystem for other OS's to use, and knowing MS's giving nature with their proprietary code.well, let's just say we may have to wait until someone hacks their code first. Excel for mac same as excel for windows?. --- Jayson --When Microsoft asks you, 'Where do you want to go today?' Tell them 'Apple.' That's exactly what I meant when I said 'Windows XP limits the maximum partition size to 32GB when formatting'. Sure, you could spend $70 on PartitionMagic, but the whole point of this thread is that the drive is going to be going back and forth between Mac and PC. The Mac will do the job without additional software. Also even PartitionMagic has only been tested and is supported on drives up to 300GB (according to Symantec), why bother when OS X will format a single partition up to 400GB or more? Still, I wish they would cross license HFS+ and NTFS. Robdew wrote: hayne wrote: I've never understood why OS X 'prechecks' file transfers for things like available space, but doesn't check the file names. I suspect this is merely due to it being harder to do. To check for available disk space is quite easy. To do preflight checks on filenames would require knowledge of what is acceptable for a filename on the destination system. Sure, this could be built into the copying software but it would require substantial effort. “Substantial effort” my ahhhh.foot. A simpleregular expression is all you need. It's the sort of thing afirst-semester programming student can handle. Cheers, b& [| ]. Not only will remote systems have differing filename conventions (lengths, allowable characters, etc), but then you'd have to check every single file before copying to see if it will work. ![]() Keeping track of space needed is simple, just have a long long of the total bytes needed. Checking the file names would either require creating a buffer of all of the names (fast, but memory-intensive), or checking each one as the algorithm goes (slow, but easier on memory). Either way, it will hurt performance *significantly*. Why yes, I *do* have a BA in Computer Science.
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