unlocking an external hard drive for my mac

[GabrielsThoughts]

I recently purchased a one TB external hard drive so that I edit video back and forth between my PC and Mac.

Under the sharing and permissions is says "I can only read" but when I initially plugged in the drive it offered to use the drive for Time Machine back up.

I am unable to transfer MOV files to the external drive using my Mac because I think the hard drive might be locked, not because it's incompateble.

[Tapewolf]

It's probably NTFS-formatted.  I'd say change it to some other filesystem, but then Windows won't be able to use it.  Microsoft have had more than 10 years to support other common filesystems, so by this point you have to assume it's being avoided on purpose.


If you want the mac to be able to write to it, try this:
http://ntfsmounter.com/

...but bear in mind that it may be disabled by default because NTFS writing is buggy in some subtle way, no-one knows. 

An alternative way would be to modify /etc/fstab as root and enable ntfs rw support, but unless you're a linux fan you probably aren't going to be able to do that.

Be aware that only 10.6 has NTFS write support.  If you're still on 10.5, you might be able to use NTFS-3G via the FUSE driver from linux, but it's going to be a bit of a nuisance.

http://macntfs-3g.blogspot.com/   (If you want to go this route, NTFS-3G is the free version, Tuxera is the commercial one)

[RobbieThe1st]

You can always use FAT-32. It's downside is the lack of support for files over 2GB, and the need to defragment once in a while, though it's supported on everything.

NTFS wise, I've found that the Linux driver(ntfs-3g) works fine for write - I used it for over a year.
I learned, however, that it fragments when written and is -impossible- to defragment. The problem is that "security descriptors" can't be moved by Windows defrag. Windows puts these descriptors right at the beginning of the disk - Linux puts them after each file. This means that when those files are moved/removed, it leaves behind these little tiny bits. Over time, the spaces between bits get smaller and smaller, and you end up with areas that -can't- be defragmented without copying all files off the drive, formatting, and copying them back on.

EXT2 is also an option, but requires modules on both Windows and OSX for RW support; OSX has read-only support, and Windows has -nothing-.

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

Have you bugrepped that back to the ntfs-3g team? They may (or may not) have a solution for that...


Alternatively, have you tried running UDefrag over it? (there's a free version floating about somewhere)