I can't do the experiment from where I am, but there IS a new man page for "mount_ntfs". So it looks like it's for real.

Type "man mount_ntfs" at the CLI for details.

[ Reply to This | # ]

NTFS volumes can be read in Panther but that's it. You still
need to prepare a FAT partition on your external drives for
Mac<->Win exchange due to the fact that NTFS support
is currently READ ONLY.

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I did set up a nice FAT32 partition (64GB) on external
USB2, BUT I can't get it to be writeable. It is "read only."

This is not an issue for my ZIP or LEXAR? Any suggestions

[ Reply to This | # ]

I did set up a nice FAT32 partition (64GB) on external
USB2, BUT I can't get it to be writeable. It is "read only."

This is not an issue for my ZIP or LEXAR? Any suggestions

[ Reply to This | # ]

I have a 200Gb drive in an external USB2.0 / Firewire case. It is formatted as a single FAT32 partition so that I can also use it with a Windows 2000 PC - great for backups and media.

I/O is read/write. The only challenge I have is that on power-up, the drive does not auto-mount. Looking for a script I can write to execute the command I use in Terminal to mount the drive manually: hdid /dev/disk1s1

I will paste the instructions that I used to create the drive. Instructions below are for multiple partitions, but you can easily adapt the steps to make one big partition. Hope this helps.
- - - - - -
--- BEGIN PASTE ---
I had exactly same problem, this is how I fixed it with my 160GB external drive.

The idea is to create partitions on target windows system and than format them on OS X.

You should be root and very carefull in terminal window on OS X.

1. Create two partitions in Windows (w2k in my case), first for HFS+, second for FAT32. No need to format them.
2. Connect drive to OS X. Befor switching drive on run this command from terminal

ls /dev/rdisk?

, you'll get list of current disks.

3. Switch on ext. drive. If OS X pop up with window about initing new drive press ignore.

4. Repeat last command. Now you should see one more disk in the list. Remeber it's number (f.e. 2).


5. Make

ls /dev/rdisk2*

You should get rdisk2s1 and rdisk2s2 - first is first partition, second is second.

6. Run command

6a. If the drives mount on the desktop, eject the drives

newfs_hfs -v VOLUME_NAME /dev/rdisk2s1

When it's done you have HFS+ partition.

7. Run command

newfs_msdos -v FAT_VOLUME_NAME -F 32 /dev/rdisk2s2

Now you have FAT32. It's not limited by 32G - I have 100G and it works at least with OS X 10.2.6.

7. Powercycle ext. drive.

8. In my case OS X picks up FAT32 partition, but doesn't recognize HFS+ (what an irony . Type

hdid /dev/disk2s1

and it will mount and show icon on display.
Pay attention - this time it's not rdisk2s1, but disk2s1.

9. On Windows go to disk manager and assign some letter to FAT32 drive. W2K works fine with partitions >32G, just doesn't want to create them.

This is it.
--- END ---

[ Reply to This | # ]

Panther does support reading from NTFS volumes and it works perfectly - I tried it with an external firewire disk. Actually the feature was promoted somewhere (maybe even on the Panther retail box)...

Gruß
MrRivers

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Well I'll be...

[~] % ls /System/Library/Filesystems/
total 0
drwxr-xr-x 12 root wheel 408 3 Nov 20:12 ./
drwxr-xr-x 51 root wheel 1734 4 Nov 16:40 ../
drwxr-xr-x 8 root wheel 272 3 Nov 20:12 AppleShare/
drwxr-xr-x 7 root wheel 238 3 Nov 20:12 URLMount/
drwxr-xr-x 4 root wheel 136 3 Nov 20:12 cd9660.fs/
drwxr-xr-x 3 root wheel 102 3 Nov 20:12 cddafs.fs/
drwxr-xr-x 4 root wheel 136 26 Sep 01:54 ftp.fs/
drwxr-xr-x 5 root wheel 170 3 Nov 20:12 hfs.fs/
drwxr-xr-x 4 root wheel 136 3 Nov 20:12 msdos.fs/
drwxr-xr-x 4 root wheel 136 3 Nov 20:12 ntfs.fs/
drwxr-xr-x 4 root wheel 136 3 Nov 20:12 udf.fs/
drwxr-xr-x 4 root wheel 136 3 Nov 20:12 ufs.fs/


[ Reply to This | # ]

well i do it on jaguar as well... just plug the ntfs drive in my G4 box and that's it...

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I think it's read only, although I don't have any proof of that.

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yes it is readonly, however there might be a way to enable writes using some terminal and automountd slickness (i only glanced through things, this is not something i expect to ever use personally)

i also noted i couldn't reformat my usb pendrive from ntfs back to ntfs in panther's diskutility. i had to get info to identify which disk it was, and then sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/disk2 to wipe the whole disk, then unplug/replug again before i could reformat as hfs+

[ Reply to This | # ]

Don't make it read/write. You will corrupt your drive. NTFS writing, outside of Windows OS's, is completely unstable.

Oh and NTFS from XP is different than NTFS from Win2k or WinNT.


[ Reply to This | # ]

As others said, it is read only. Indeed I believe it is a slight modification to the same drivers that Linux uses. One rather wishes they'd ported over some of the other Linux file systems as well...

The folks who wrote the Linux driver have tried reverse engineering writing, but have had no success. I saw one company that offered drivers for NTFS for Linux that were r/w but didn't see that they offered drivers for OSX. One hopes that this arrives soon.



[ Reply to This | # ]

Linux -does- have partial write support for NTFS.

It's the journaling that the linux hackers haven't been able to get down. What happens is, you need to create a file on your NTFS partition. That file becomes a virtual disk image (readable/writable in windows and in Linux). Linux can then write to THAT file without breaking anything in NTFS. That is stable.

In fact, there's a distribution that coexists with windows since it does everything in a single file. (Forget which distro does that at the moment)

Now, writing full in NTFS is still experimental, and you need to run chkdsk after every boot... :) Data loss is possible here.

Paragon is the company that wrote the NTFS-Linux full support driver.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Hm, could you then layer a RAM disk on top of an NTFS partition using "mount -union"? Hmmm...

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When I was upgrading to Linux kernel 2.6, I noticed that support for NTFS does not appear as "experimental" anymore. I did not try but I suppose this indicates they can handle NTFS very well now.

Anyone interested in porting it to Darwin?

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Is there a file size limitation? I seem to stall out copying files at about 2.4GB. No error is given, but the copied file is smaller than the original on the NTFS drive.

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I just can't seem to use NTFS at all. I have a Lacie 500GB external firewire drive formatted to NTFS (plugged into a PC for use on the network) and when I plug it in my PowerBook with OSX Panther, it just crashes the whole system. I have no idea why it does it. Does anyone have a solution? I am going abroad soon and wanted to take the drive with me to plug into my PB but if it doesn't work...

[ Reply to This | # ]

I'm having the same problem: I have an external USB HD for my Win 2K computer. I assume its NTFS since that's how my Win2K is setup. It was "plug&play" and just started working right away without me having to do anything.

When connecting it to my friend's OSX ibook G4 it detects the device but wants to initialize it.

Is there OSX software we need to run to access my drive without erasing it?

Thanks!

[ Reply to This | # ]

I'm having the same problem. I have 80g ntfs hd, plugging in using USB 2.0 to a G4 iBook causes the system to crash. Any thoughts?


[ Reply to This | # ]

Hi
I tried to plug an internal NTFS HD with no success (I get a msg at the startup asking me to initalize or ignore the disk).

I found that the only way to have it corretly mounted on the desktop is (assuming that disk0s1 is my ntfs volume):

1) Go to /Volumes/ and create a new empty dir (i.e. NTFS_VOLUME)

2) Via terminal i wrote

sudo mount_ntfs /dev/disk0s1 /Volumes/NTFS_VOLUME

providing the root password.

3) Logout and Login and the disk, named "NTFS_VOLUME", was there.

Bye

[ Reply to This | # ]

Too bad this is read-only.. a nice start though.

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I found this instruction and used it to set up a 200Gb external IDE drive in a firewire/USB2 enclosure. Perhaps it will work for you.

- - - -
<begin paste
I had exactly same problem, this is how I fixed it with my 160GB external drive.

The idea is to create partitions on target windows system and than format them on OS X.

You should be root and very carefull in terminal window on OS X.

1. Create two partitions in Windows (w2k in my case), first for HFS+, second for FAT32. No need to format them.
2. Connect drive to OS X. Befor switching drive on run this command from terminal

ls /dev/rdisk?

, you'll get list of current disks.

3. Switch on ext. drive. If OS X pop up with window about initing new drive press ignore.

4. Repeat last command. Now you should see one more disk in the list. Remeber it's number (e.g.: 2).

5. Make

ls /dev/rdisk2*

You should get rdisk2s1 and rdisk2s2 - first is first partition, second is second.

6. Run command

6a. If the drives mount on the desktop, eject the drives

newfs_hfs -v VOLUME_NAME /dev/rdisk2s1

When it's done you have HFS+ partition.

7. Run command

newfs_msdos -v FAT_VOLUME_NAME -F 32 /dev/rdisk2s2

Now you have FAT32. It's not limited by 32G - I have 100G and it works at least with OS X 10.2.6.

7. Powercycle ext. drive.

8. In my case OS X picks up FAT32 partition, but doesn't recognize HFS+ (what an irony . Type

hdid /dev/disk2s1

and it will mount and show icon on display.
Pay attention - this time it's not rdisk2s1, but disk2s1.

9. On Windows go to disk manager and assign some letter to FAT32 drive. W2K works fine with partitions >32G, just doesn't want to create them.

This is it. <end paste>

[ Reply to This | # ]

just tried out this tip. works good so far. i tried it because I have a FW drive I share data between my AL-PB and my PC, but at the same time I require a partition solely for OSX to store OSX-only data for archiving and backup. (alas insufficient mulas for a new FW case + hdd)

WindowsXP will not (obviously) read the HFS+ partition, and load the FAT32 partition. 10.3.2 will automatically mount the FAT32 partition but not the HFS+ partition automatically. have to manually mount it with the hdid command.

wondering if there's a workaround to mount the HFS partition automatically rather then manually via terminal.

[ Reply to This | # ]