Saturday, November 24, 2007

NTFS-3G 1.1120

You can read about what's new in this release at the official NTFS-3G release page.
There's nothing new that's Mac-specific. The scripts and patches are pretty much the same as in the previous release.
The stable build is still the preferred download. The extra speed offered in the ublio build is suspected to come at a price of slight data corruption at times, but I can't confirm it as I can't reproduce it. There is a possibility that those reports may have had other causes like faulty hardware.

Download NTFS-3G 1.1120 [stable]
Download NTFS-3G 1.1120 [ublio]
(packaging by catacombae)
Requirements: Mac OS X 10.4/10.5, a PowerPC or Intel computer, MacFUSE 0.4.0 or 1.1 installed (MacFUSE 1.0.0 doesn't work well with this package... upgrade to 1.1).
This package has been tested with OS X 10.4.11/Intel and OS X 10.5.1/Intel.

If you're having problems with this package, please do the following before reporting it:
  • Check if the previous version of the package works better for you.

  • Check that the NTFS drive you're trying to mount has been cleanly unmounted in Windows, using "Safe remove hardware". If you just "pull the plug" the drive won't mount with NTFS-3G.

  • Check that the NTFS drive is error free, using chkdsk.

  • Collect system specifications, such as OS version, processor type (Intel/PowerPC), drive type (internal/USB/FireWire) etc. before submitting a problem report.
This information is essential to solve the problem. Just writing "It doesn't work, you suck." doesn't help a bit.

This build includes:
ntfs-3g 1.1120 (patched)
ntfsprogs 1.13.1

98 comments:

Anonymous said...

doesn't work. does not mount drive to the desktop finder, nor can most apps find NTFS drive. if you nav to /volumes you'll see the drive, but then no content. 10.4.11 G4 laptop

Anonymous said...

this installer is NOT installing /sw/bin/ntfs-3g so the mount fails... is ntfs-3g being installed somewhere else ? can't find it. build / installer is broken

Erik said...

Anonymous, November 25, 2007 4:05 AM:

Is this a problem with this specific release? Did the previous ones work?
Are you sure the drive you're trying to use was properly unmounted in Windows via "Safe remove hardware" and that the filesystem is clean and uncorrupted? (do chkdsk)
If the answer to these questions is yes, no, yes, then please enable debug logging and try to mount again, and then send me the log output.

Erik said...

Anonymous, November 25, 2007 5:25 AM:

It's not supposed to install it into /sw/bin . It goes in /usr/local/bin.
You're confusing this package with the structuring that Fink imposes.

Erik said...

Anonymous, November 25, 2007 4:05 AM:

By the way, i meant "yes, yes, yes" and not "yes, no, yes" ;>

Anonymous said...

"safe", "stable" and "release" are not the terms applicable to the software that does not function at all on cleanly installed and updated os.

thank you for nothing

Anonymous said...

btw, same problem as in the first comment, "doesn't work. does not mount drive to the desktop finder, nor can most apps find NTFS drive. if you nav to /volumes you'll see the drive, but then no content. 10.4.11, mac mini"

Erik said...

Anonymous, November 25, 2007 6:33 AM:

Since you're posting anonymously, I really can't follow the thread. Please at least put a tag or a name at the end of your post so I can identify you. (Applies to all anonymous posters that expect a reply)

NTFS-3G has proved to be working nicely with the stable build, given a NTFS drive that's in a clean and unmounted state. The ublio build is experimental since I've had fuzzy reports on data corruption.

If it doesn't work for _you_ then I need a verbose problem report, or I can't do anything about it.
You can generate this by turning on debug logging and do a mount operation.

Anonymous said...

sorry for posting anonymously, don't have an account. But I`d like to say that for me, this release is working like a charm. However I had the previous release already installed.
DON'T blame erik for the release not working on your mac. He's doing this stuff for free, don't forget that! And he's doing a very good job. Keep in mind that's it's not the easiest kind of work. Be polite!
erik, please don't get pissed by these kind of person. At this point I'd like to thank you very much for your work. I appreciated it very much. It helps the mac community a lot. Keep up the good work.

greetings from germany,
tobi

Anonymous said...

quote
s this a problem with this specific release? Did the previous ones work?
Are you sure the drive you're trying to use was properly unmounted in Windows via "Safe remove hardware" and that the filesystem is clean and uncorrupted? (do chkdsk)
If the answer to these questions is yes, no, yes, then please enable debug logging and try to mount again, and then send me the log output.
END QUOTE

I'm the first anon poster - SteveO -
AFAIK drive was unmounted ok. I'll enable debug mode. also note that Disk Utility sees the drive, and will do a get info on it. Thats about it. I can't format the drive or unmount it because DI says another app has files open, and thats it. I've also tried to manually mount the drive, and now that I know where NTFS-3G is hiding, I'll try a term mount, but I doubt it will work. it seems like the OS NTSF and NTSF-3G are fighting over the drive where the OS NTSD saw the drive first and placed a lock on it not allowing another driver to take over. should I try to temporarily remove the NTSF.FS folder so the OS can't grab it at all ?

Anonymous said...

Update -

SteveO

so I took Erik's advice and mounted the drive (FW case) onto the PC, ran chkdsk which came up clean, then since it wouldn't let me eject it, shut the PC down making sure this was a clean removal. low and behold it now works as READ ONLY ! its seems that maybe the NTSF-3G driver isn't grabbing it. ejecting & remounting the volume didn't do anything. in fact I can not eject the disk on the mac - its saying a file is in use. it seems the drivers are fighting.

Erik said...

tobi:
Thanks for letting me know that at least somebody got it to work. And thanks for those kind words. :> People seem to think that they have the right to make demands on something they don't have to pay for.
I'm eager to have this software working on all kinds of configurations, but when people put pressure on me and rudely demand that I fix stuff so it works on their specific configuration, I can't help but wonder what's in it for me.

Anonymous said...

SteveO sez >

I'm not complaining, just saying its not working on my config, and if there is something that can be done to make it work, the help would be appreciated. If you want logs or something from me, I'd be glad to send them along. Your hard work _is_ greatly appreciated for making the world a little bit better.

Erik said...

SteveO:

Hi again. This "fighting" between the OS and NTFS-3G isn't taking place anywhere but in your mind. :)
When a NTFS drive is connected the following happens.
- OS asks the ntfs-3g.fs package if it can mount the drive.
- If the answer is false, it asks the internal driver (ntfs.fs) if it can mount the drive.

So if ntfs-3g can't mount the drive, in theory the OS should fall back on the internal read only driver. It's not always working this smoothly though, sometimes ntfs-3g.fs reports that a mount is possible and then proceeds to mount but then discovers that it wasn't possible. If you're on leopard, then the drive icon will have a "stop sign" over it when that happens.

Now, after your chkdsk and clean unmount in Windows. Apparently ntfs-3g.fs still doesn't like the drive.
Now is the time to turn on debug logging. (script located in the "Tools" directory in the install .dmg)
When you have turned it on, unmount and remount (or restart if it doesn't let you unmount). After this, there should be a file in your file system called /var/log/ntfs-3g-debug.log . Please send this file to my mail address referenced on my regular site http://hem.bredband.net/catacombae so I can have a look at it.

Erik said...

SteveO:

I wasn't really referring to you (I think), but some other anonymous poster. It's a little difficult to follow who's who when everyone are posting anonymously.

Anonymous said...

SteveO >

its now actually working :) but this is the rest of the story.

so over the last day, thinking that maybe the .dmg here had a problem, I found another, and installed that. no good, same thing. I went to run the installer in the original DMG and it said there was a _newer_ version of NTFS-3G installed ? hmmm.

ran the uninstaller, then ran the installer from here and this time it worked ok. rebooted, plugged the drive in, it worked :). so maybe this other installed put in some missing bit ? in any event, I'm going to gather up the log file and send it. thanks, and I guess from here is should be ok. now to try the G5.

BTW the installer I got came from This
---------
ntfs-3g package was built against MacFUSE 1.0.0 and is based on the Fink package described at
http://pdb.finkproject.org/pdb/package.php/ntfs-3g
-------------
and it was a simple zip.tar file. it had only a readme and the NTSF-3G.pkg file. so I'm a bit surprised the installer was so different.

also weird, disk utility say the volume name is disk2, as opposed to disk2s1

Erik said...

SteveO:

Great to hear that it's working. A little confusing though, what actually had happened when it didn't work. I guess we'll never know. :/
Magic plays a big role in computing today. ;)

oleja said...

The same situation Leo 10.5 this time does not work due to some error. I've formated ext HDD and it was OK for a few days, then due to some error I have a problem similar to post #1. How I can turn debug on and save it output

oleja said...

I've sent you the debug output. It looks fine. But the disk does not seem to work.

oleja said...

If you know the spell please tell :)

Unknown said...

The stable build is working fine for me on my internal Macbook drive partitioned into HFS+ and NTFS. I have 10.5.1 with Macfuse1.1.1 installed.
I installed over the stable 1.1104 release (which I had installed by first running the remove NTFS-3g .command file, then running the 1.1104 .pkg).
Hope this data helps in some way - many thanks.

Anonymous said...

George Machen (10.4.10) said...

All is well.

Uninstalled 1.1104-stable then installed 1.1120-stable. (Is it best practice or even mandatory that a formal uninstall be done before updating to a newer version?)

Notwithstanding the note that there really is no new Mac code, it's discernibly faster! (Perhaps something else fortuitous but unrelated occurred on my Mac in the interim.)

Man, copying files under USB2 is much, much slower than Firewire 400; I thought the two were supposed to be roughly comparable. I can't tell any difference between FW 400 & 800, and these are large video files. (Not a question; just an observation.)

So let me get this straight: Even though one configures the NTFS hard disk driver option that says:

"Optimize for quick removal - This setting disables write caching on the disk and in Windows, so you can disconnect the device without using the Safe Removal icon."

... then if disconnected without first clicking the task bar Safely Remove Hardware icon, Windows *still* marks the HD as "dirty" (I think Erik said, "marked as in use")? Sheesh! I guess Windoze makes such a distinction without a difference.

Inasmuch as the expectations of my clients sending in video disks for which they've set the HD drivers in this manner would perfectly naturally not click the Safe Remove, would Erik consider accompanying future updates with a Terminal command in the Tools folder to set NTFS-3G to ignore the "dirty" unmount attribute? (At our own risk, of course.) There would be no other risks, would there, as long as we are sure that there was no write caching?

Anonymous said...

Hi Erick,
thx for the package !
I'am a newbie to OS X but have been using Linux a lot.

just installed 1.1120 stable on OS X 10.4.11.

my ntfs partition does not show in finder. After some investigation and looking in /Volumes, it seems it is mounted with read/write for root, and admin group is only read.

is there a way to automount
with the correct permission for the current user and not root?

thx. sylvain from paris.

PS: results of ls -l /Volumes:
drwxr-xr-x 5 root admin 170 Nov 26 19:19 New Volume 1

Anonymous said...

SteveO Sez

I've generally found USB2 to run at about 20mb/sec no matter what. FW400 will do about 40mb/sec, and I've really gotten 80mb/sec with FW800 with a 2 drive array. so there is a RW difference.

AFAIK mounting "dirty" drives, I would kindly ask that you mount the drive no matter what. if you don't, a user will assume the driver doesn't work. At best, maybe put up a dialog warning the user "This drive was not unmounted / ejected properly. do you want to mount the volume and use at your own risk ?"

of course if you wanted to really get fancy, maybe a control panel with some buttons on it to control the driver behavior. now that would be a great final touch.

Anonymous said...

Drive: 320gig WD SATA drive in a enclosure via USB2
Problem: I'm still having this problem of not be able to view anything in the drive (but I know datas are there because if I was to create a new folder/new file in the USB drive, it would appear for 0.1 seconds then disappear) then I boot into Windows and look in the USB drive there I can see the new folder/file I've created under OSX. but I can read/write the XP partition (bootcamp) just fine under OSX. Any idea or suggestions?

Erik said...

sylvain:

Are you sure the partition is mounted at all? Can you browse the partition if you elevate yourself to root with "sudo bash" in the Terminal?

Erik said...

George Machen:

Even though no new Mac-specific code exists, it's of course possible that Szaka has done some general optimizations. I haven't evaluated the performance of this release very thoroughly, so please do if you have the time. (:

Generally, the USB2 speed is only helped by the ublio release. Without ublio, the speed is often around 1 Mbit/s, and with ublio it goes up to about 20 Mbit/s when using USB2. FireWire and the internal SATA/PATA connections work differently.
I think 400 Mbit/s is usually enough for the top transfer speed of normal desktop hard drives, which is why you wouldn't normally notice much of a difference in performance from 800 Mbit/s FireWire. My guess is that it is the latency that makes FireWire superior to USB2, together with DMA transfer usually being unavailable with USB2, but I can only make a more or less educated guess about that.

To sum things up, when the NTFS driver in Windows gets the unmount message, it closes all files and clears the "in use" flag. When you just pull the plug, Windows doesn't have time to do anything like that. The connection is lost and the drive is left in a possibly inconsistent state (the file system itself may be okay as caching is turned off, but you might still have open files on the volume with unsaved data).


Basically, it's always wrong to just pull the plug on a drive. The problem with Windows is that it blocks a drive from being properly unmounted too easily, so often people don't even have a choice.
Also the "Safe remove hardware" feature isn't very cleverly positioned in the GUI, and its function may be hard to understand for non-technical users. So the Windows solution to allow people to pull the plug, and then automatically repair the drive when attached is a really ugly solution which can result in data loss. Some program may even be in the middle of a write operation when you pull the plug, in which case it's possible that a not so well constructed hard disk will suffer from physical damage.

The Mac-way of having an eject button next to each drive is a lot clearer and encourages the right behavior.

Anonymous said...

Yes, I have noticed a 10-20% speed increase in certain workloads on Linux. The reason is that file timestamps are not always modified now but only when needed, according to the POSIX standard. Since these data are stored redundantly, sometimes far away on the disk and the disk access is much more costly on OS X thus it's indeed possible that the timestamps related fixes have caused a bigger performance increase on OS X.

Just for curiosity: In Windows Vista, a USB device may lose data if you right-click the device in Windows Explorer and then click Eject. Microsoft's KB describing the bug: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/940508

Anonymous users: you an post using any name without any registration anywhere if you choose the "Other", not the "Anonymous" identity. Erik, maybe you can disable the "Anonymous" option? It has no real use, People can post anonymously using the "Other" option.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the reply, Erik, with your explanation about the inadequacies of Windoze that make it hard for normal human beings properly to unmount a hard disk.

I still think that there sometimes are situations that make a complete refusal of NTFS-3G to mount a previously-improperly unmounted drive untenable. (E.g., not having a Windoze box myself, am I supposed to FedEx such a drive back to a client, just so he can do a Safe Remove, then ship it back to me, meanwhile missing a deadline?)

Also, it seems to me that once a drive is improperly unmounted, any damage from subsequent use is already done: Just sticking it back in the PC and doing a Safe Remove doesn't fix anything that was broken earlier.

I like SteveO's suggestion about a warning dialog with the option to mount the drive anyway. Kind of like Mac OS X's alert after rebooting following an improper shutdown.

oleja said...

erik!

What is about the debug output sent yesterday?

Unknown said...

Is this option still possible in these builds?
># Added an option to disable NTFS-3G
>through a script in the "Tools"
>directory, allowing you to switch
>between the internal NTFS driver and
>NTFS-3G.
If yes, where is the Tools directory? (I couldn't find it), what commandoptions should I use exactly to revert to the internal NTFS driver?

Erik said...

oleja:
I'm sorry, but I have a lot to do right now... I'll get back to you.

Erik said...

w_m0zart:
You can find the "Tools" folder in the install .dmg file.

Erik said...

George Machen:

A warning dialog indeed seems like a nice way to go, but unfortunatly I don't know how to realize that suggestion easily. Suppose you're sshing your OS X box and run the diskutil mount command... would you want that warning dialog to be translated to a text message then? Otherwise the disk arbitration framework will be blocked, possibly until you reboot the machine.

I'm going to need to investigate that option a lot until I come up with a good user friendly solution.

Erik said...

Szaka:

You're absolutely right, there's no real need to allow anonymous comments. Thanks for the tip. I guess I'll just disable that.

Unknown said...

@erik, thank you very much. The Tools directory was in the .dmg installation file. The readme file there confirms that one just should choose the proper script to enable or disable NTFS-3G.

However I found a difference in behaviour between unmounting from NTFS-3G driver and unmounting from the internal NTFS driver:
-Unmounting when the internal NTFS-driver is enabled, makes my external hard disk immediately spin-down.
-Unmounting when the NTFS-3G-driver is enabled, doesn't spin down my hard disk immediately. It takes 10 minutes (This time is defined in the SpindownHD utility (When Xcode is installed in /Developer/Applications/Performance\ Tools/CHUD/Hardware\ Tools/))

It looks like when I unmount the hard disk (from within the finder) when NTFS-3G is enabled, the OS does detect inactivity, and starts to count for another 10 minutes before spinning down the hard disk. But not because of the unmount command, but due to a inactivity period.

Is there a difference between unmounting when the internal driver is enabled and unmounting when NTFS-3G is enabled?

Unknown said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Unknown said...

-follow up-
I found out the disk will unmount and spin-down properly from the terminal with the command:

hdiutil eject /dev/diskXXXX

What diskXXXX is can be found with the command:

df

--
System: OS X, 10.4.11
External hard disk with OXFW924 chipset, connected with usb

Unknown said...

For people who are having problems with NTFS-3G, I've actually found another OS X NTFS read/write solution that may or may not work better for you. It's Paragon NTFS Mac OS X, and it actually integrates into OS X quite nicely. The speed is also leaps ahead of what NTFS-3G offers, even with the ublio patch. It's actually on par with the normal copying speed when copying files within OS X filesystems, external or internal. I also have no trouble working with Japanese/Korean-named files between OS X and Windows, which I had problems with the NTFS-3G solution. How are they able to achieve this is beyond my knowledge.

The only thing that will prevent some users to go for it is that it's a commercial solution. You have to pay $30 during the introductory period, or $40 after that. Yes, it's a pay solution, but if you need full NTFS read/write support and NTFS-3G doesn't work well enough for you, the price may well be worth it. Otherwise, it may be better for you to stick with NTFS-3G builds (with ublio patch if you wish) erik posts here. For me, Paragon solution works better, though I am debating whether I should pay for it.

Paragon offers a 10-day trial, so you can try it out.

http://www.paragon-software.com/home/ntfs-mac/

Anonymous said...

It works on my osx 10.5.1.

BUT my vista on boot camp can not boot up after writing a file into vista partition by ntfs-3g.

Erik said...

swk:

Which build were you using? Ublio or stable one?
I don't use Vista myself on the Mac, but I have it running on another computer and ntfs-3g (running in Ubunutu) hasn't ever harmed my Vista drive.

Erik said...

w_m0zart:

Intresting info. I have never even thought about such things as whether or not the drive spins down properly.

Unknown said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Unknown said...

I tried to find out in sources how NTFS-3G and/or MacFUSE driver deals with the unmounting proces that takes place after pressing Command+E, but I couldn't find any reference. Could someone point out where I may find this?

Regarding spinning-down, I just noticed that when the spin-down command has been given to the drive (with the internal NTFS driver and after pressing Command+E, it still stays listed in the 'diskutil list'-command from the terminal. I had the same output with NTFS-3G. So regardless of the active driver, spinning down is probably just a (s)ata-command which is being sent when the internal NTFS driver is enabled.

Why this may be important, I think is for two reasons:
-If data from cache memory is being flushed, the hard disk may look unmounted, but still should not be removed.
-Theoretically, if the hard disk is not spinning, the current is lower, causing less troubles when unplugging the cable. (induction and current path to wrong power/data pins due to pulling connector with some skew)

Ps. Jae-wan, I don't see the point of posting so extensively about other NTFS solutions here. If you felt it would be necessary, it would have been enough to just post a link to that commercial solution which you found. No more than 3 lines of text would have covered the same message. This blog is about NTFS-3G for Mac.

DC in Japan said...

Erik,

I posted the question yesterday about renaming the Firewire drive in the older version section. Thanks for the ntfslabel recommendation - it works great! in fact, I was surprised that the disk stays renamed even after rebooting.

Thanks again for your work on this project.

Anonymous said...

My external HD mounted OK after 'safely remove' from Windows. It does not unmount correctly. I can eject the HD in finder and it disappears but when I reconnect the HD it does not mount. I'm using OSX 10.5.1.

Anonymous said...

Follow-up to my last comment. I have found the solution to the unmount issue. Even though I have ejected the disk in finder, it still shows up in the disk utility. I have to eject it again then I have no problem with mounting when I reconnect the drive. I also noticed the read or write speed of NTFS-3g isn't as fast as native (read only), running NTFS-3g ver 1120 and Lastest Macfuse. Another question: How to cleanly remove Macfuse? It doesn't come with uninstall scripts.

Wesley said...

1.1120 ublio build certainly comes with uninstall script...

Erik said...

AaronR:

MacFUSE does come with uninstall scripts, and they're located in:
/System/Library/Filesystems/fusefs.fs/Support/uninstall-macfuse-core.sh (OS X 10.4)
/Library/Filesystems/fusefs.fs/Support/uninstall-macfuse-core.sh (OS X 10.5)

...in case you never figured it out yourself. :)

Anonymous said...

Just download Macfuse update and "NTFS-3G 1.1120" update. was worried about having to use command line interface, but no need. once installed windows drive icon changed to a globe within a transparent box. Checked the drive info. system showed read and write. works perfectly. Many thanks for this program.

Mac fuse -MacFUSE-Core-10.4-1.1.0.dmg find here:
http://code.google.com/p/macfuse/
And then use
NTFS-3G 1.1120 (Stable)

KrishanuAR said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
KrishanuAR said...

This is very mysterious, until yesterday ntfs-3g was working perfectly for mounting my bootcamp partition. Now when I start up Mac (OS X 10.4.11) the Volume wont mount anymore. However the directory was created in /Volumes when i tried to manually mount from terminal i got the following error:

Error opening partition device: Permission denied
Failed to mount '/dev/disk0s3': Permission denied

The standard OSX (read-only) mount_ntfs works. I did chkdsk c: /f in windows and there was an error that was supposedly corrected, but ntfs-3g still doesn't work.

I have an Intel Core Duo Macbook, and I'm using Mac fuse -MacFUSE-Core-10.4-1.1.0 and NTFS-3G 1.1120 (Stable)

Erik said...

KrishanuAR:

First of all, when trying to mount the volume manually, you must be superuser, that is prepend "sudo " to the command. I guess that's why you're getting the "permission denied" message. Redo the manual mount with sudo and tell me what it says.

Second, if the manual mount didn't offer any valuable information, run the "Enable debug logging" script from the install dmg under the folder Tools, and unmount/remount. You should get a log file at /var/log/ntfs-3g-debug.log possibly telling you more about what the problem may be.

KrishanuAR said...

this is what I get when I run it with sudo:

$LogFile indicates unclean shutdown (0, 0)
Failed to mount '/dev/disk0s3': Operation not supported
Mount is denied because NTFS is marked to be in use. Choose one action:

Choice 1: If you have Windows then disconnect the external devices by
clicking on the 'Safely Remove Hardware' icon in the Windows
taskbar then shutdown Windows cleanly.

Choice 2: If you don't have Windows then you can use the 'force' option for
your own responsibility. For example type on the command line:

mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/disk0s3 /Volumes/KR Windows -o force

Or add the option to the relevant row in the /etc/fstab file:

/dev/disk0s3 /Volumes/KR Windows ntfs-3g defaults,force 0 0

...

I enabled logging but I cant seem to find the log file...

Erik said...

KrishanuAR:

Well the message speaks clearly. Your drive isn't unmounted properly. This may happen:
- If Windows crashes or you don't shutdown windows properly.
- If you leave windows in a "hibernated" state instead of shutting it down.
- If you pull the plug on an external drive (doesn't seem to be applicable to this situation).

The log file should appear, but it won't give any additional information at the moment since we have identified the problem.

KrishanuAR said...

That's just the problem though, since then I have logged into bootcamp many times and exited properly, I have also used chkdsk /f but ntfs-3g still wont work.

Erik said...

KrishanuAR:

Strange indeed. Are you sure there is no other driver concurrently using the NTFS volume, like the internal NTFS driver? Another instance of ntfs-3g (check the process list).

I have never experienced that an NTFS drive is still marked as "in use" after a proper shutdown of Windows... so it all sounds very confusing.

Please check if you can force mount the drive using ntfs-3g from the command line. Then unmount it and try to mount it without the force option.

KrishanuAR said...

Well I'm not quite sure what happened but ntfs-3g seemed to have fixed itself, however the drive icon I had set disappeared, but thats not a big deal because I can reapply it since the drive is now read-write.

Anonymous said...

Personally, I would like to mount only my Boot Camp Vista partition as read-only (i.e. with Apple's NTFS driver), while other NTFS drives should be read-write, so - from Windows - I put a .ntfs-readonly text file at the root of this partition, as suggested elsewhere; but it doesn't seem to work, with this realease (latest MacFuse and Ublio NTFS-3G): if your 3G driver is activated, it takes over all NTFS partitions, in other words.
Alternatively, will it be possible to integrate NTFS-3G and Boot Camp better in future releases? For example, by having an NTFS-3G-enabled Boot Camp partition to show up in the Startup Disk preferences (which doesn't happen now).
That would be cool, indeed!

Erik said...

Anonymous, December 17, 2007 8:53 PM:

I agree, that with NTFS-3G not messing up the Startup Disk prefpane would be cool, but I don't know the details on how that works. If you find any information on that, I could possibly do something to make it work but right now I have no idea how to do it.

I will investigate what's wrong with the .ntfs-readonly way of disabling ntfs-3g. Are you sure the file is named _exactly_ .ntfs-readonly and not for instance .ntfs-readonly.txt ? Check in the Terminal.

Anonymous said...

It works fine. I was wondering how the Automount feature works, what files have been edited to allow it to work. I would like to change it so my NTFS drives mount with the option of local. That way it shows up as a local drive, not a network drive. Thanks

Erik said...

teejer:

If you run OS X 10.5 the mount script automatically enables the local option. On 10.4 it won't do that because there are implementation problems leading to Disk Utility locking up and other strange behavior.
You can have a look at the mount script and modfify it at your own risk:
/System/Library/Filesystems/ntfs-3g.fs/ntfs-3g.util

Anonymous said...

I'm having some trouble with this. I'm positive the NTFS partitions I have are fine, CHKDSK'd etc. Although they ARE formatted by Win2K so they might be "older" NTFS.

If I do small writes, no problem. Working with the odd Openoffice Document and saving it, no trouble.

If I try to copy a lot of data, after about 50MB, the progress bar freezes, then after a few moments a dialog appears saying the write operation timed out.

I'm using v1.1120, and had the same behaviour with the previous release.

Erik said...

Anonymous, December 22, 2007 2:41 AM:

That's a new issue to me, so I need to know more about your setup....
- Does it occur when copying files using the Finder only or does it happen when invoking "cp" from the Terminal as well?
- Are you copying a lot of small files or a few really large files?
- Are you using the stable or the ublio build?
- What are your hardware specs, and which version of OS X are you running?
- What kind of connection does your hard drive use? (USB/FireWire/SATA/PATA...)

Anonymous said...

Thanks for replying, Erik. (Forgot to use a nickname last time) Copying with the terminal WORKS! At least, it managed to copy the 600+ MB of various-sized files that make up my Thunderbird e-mail.

I'm on 10.4.11, the NTFS partitions are on an internal SATA drive, and I am using NTFS-3G_1.1120-stable-catacombae.dmg

I have not tried the Ublio build, should I?

Erik said...

Vertiphon:

No, you shouldn't need the ublio build. It achieves significantly higher transfer rates with certain connections such as USB, but when using a SATA drive it's usually not noticable.
In particular it won't make this problem go away by any chance. (Ok, you could try it... but it seems improbable)

The Finder is a strange animal. From my experiences in OS X I would rate the Finder development team and the QuickTime development team lowest when it comes to product quality.
The Finder is extremely inflexible and obviously not very well tested with "strange" situations caused by foreign (non-Apple) file systems.

That said, it really sounds like there is something wrong with how ntfs-3g handles this operation.

So... conclusion:
Sounds like a bug, but it's outside of my scope as I'm only maintaining the OS X package and not the main codebase.
I recommend that you browse to the main ntfs-3g development site/forums (http://www.ntfs-3g.org) and report your problems there instead.

Anonymous said...

Thanks Erik. I'll probably do that. But if it is just Finder that won't copy correctly, what other options do I have? Are there other file managers for OS X which work okay with NTFS-3G? I am still broadly unfamiliar with the OS X terminal, so an alternative GUI for copying would be preferable.

Anonymous said...

Erik, you were right on the .ntfs-reaonly.txt suggestion: I had created that file from within Windows Vista (in NotePad, IIRC, or whatever it is called), and indeed it shows up in Leopard with the .txt extension (verified this with TinkerTool, to show invisible files). Thus I (re)created the .ntfs-readonly file from within the OS X Terminal (after having activated NTFS-3G), with the commands cd /Volumes/WinVista, sudo pico .ntfs-readonly, ctrl-O, return, ctrl-X, and indeed it works (also shows up in Startup Disk) now! :-)

Baby Foust said...

Need Help

I had the current stable version working just fine. I then installed the xtools for something but then uninstalled them running the uninstaller in root. After that my Bootcamp drive does not mount with the ntfs-3g driver. I reinstalled it and macfuse and still nothing. Anyone have any ideas? I dont want to reformat and reinstall at this moment maybe over the weekend or in a few weeks but not now, because I know it will work after that.

Erik said...

Baby Foust:

To troubleshoot, you may want to try enabling debug logging through the script supplied in the install .dmg file (in the Tools folder). The log file generated at /var/log/ntfs-3g-debug.log might tell you something intresting.

Also, you should try mounting the drive manually in the Terminal using the binary /usr/local/bin/ntfs-3g and see what error messages you get.

I suspect that the uninstaller for "xtools", whatever that is (your're talking about XCode Tools?) have inadvertedly removed some library dependency which ntfs-3g needs.

Also, what are your system specs and OS version?

Baby Foust said...

Leopard 10.5.1

Anonymous said...

Hello Erik,

happy new year :-)

does the actual release work with the new macfuse 1.3?

Erik said...

Anonymous, January 9, 2008 2:50 PM:

Happy new year to you. :>
I have no idea, why don't you try it? ;> Usually, updates to MacFUSE will not have any negative impact on the operation of NTFS-3G. I'll test whether the new release works well tonight if I have the time.

Anonymous said...

looks like it works with the new macfuse (1.3)

Anonymous said...

A quick summary after two weekends' worth of experimentation:

I am on Leopard on a MacBook Pro.
NOW everything works quite nicely including the ublio routines which noticeably increase search/read/write speed. A great many thanks to Erik Larsen for all the effort.

Here are some things that should definitely be added to the Installation instructions or should be put into a new ReadMe file.

* A disk that has not been hardware-removed via the Windows Quick Launch bar will *not* automount under NTFS-3g. If you are running a Fusion Windows emulator, you have hardware-remove *and* USB-disconnect your NTSF drives. This is contrary to what happens with the Apple native NTFS drivers where you can simply USB disconnect, and then the drive shows up on the Mac side.

* If you have a disk that will not auto-mount, connect it to the nearest native Windows PC, hardware-remove the drive and then the drive will automount.

* If I were Erik, I would also put the warning about disconnecting the hard drive only via the eject or the hardware remove button right into the ReadMe.


Now that I have NTFS-3g ublio running, here are two more comments:

* The new drivers seem to considerably accelerate USB disk operations in the Fusion Windows environment. I now do Windows-side backups at least as fast under Fusion as I did them before under a native duo Lenovo system.

* The only bothersome incompatibility of NTFS-3g (both with and without ublio) I've noticed so far is that a Macside backup program called "Data Backup" cannot see non-root directory entries on a NTSFS-3g disk.

All the best, and thank you again. Eric

Unknown said...

I'm not sure if this issue is brought up, but I'll post it anyway.

With MacFUSE 1.3.1, Leopard 10.5.1, and your latest ubilo build, I copied some big-sized files into the NTFS partition. Then, when I boot up the boot camp, those files mysteriously disappear, as if it wasn't even copied in the first place.

Then I disabled file caching and tried again. That time, the files appear to be copied OK, with the expense of longer wait time to copy.

Any thoughts about this weird situation?

Chris Liphart said...

Okay, I get that you have to "Safely Remove" the hard drive in Windows, and I did that with my external hard drive. I can access that and read/write with no issue. But I can't do that with my internal Windows partition. I can see it, but it's read only. How would I "Safely Remove" that in Windows as it holds windows? That's where my documents and music are, so read/write capabilities there would be awesome. I can't find any solutions in the comments here though. Thanks for making such a great application! Oh, and I'm dual-booting Leopard and Vista, if that makes any difference, and using the latest stable build of NTFS-3G (and MacFUSE).

Erik said...

Xtopher Robin:

"Safe remove hardware" is only applicable to external drives, as they're the ones that you are able to plug in and unplug. Internal drives always get unmounted properly as long as you shutdown windows properly.
If your internal drive doesn't mount, even though you have shutdown Windows in a proper manner previously (and checked that the drive is error free with chkdsk), then there is some other problem.

Unknown said...

I've been trying to get this thing to work for days now, but I cannot get my external WD Scorpio 250GB to work. It is also not visible in the Disk Utility.
It works however on a Windows Vista based PC

Erik said...

Donald J:

If it doesn't show up in Disk Utility, there's not much ntfs-3g can do for you. You'll have to make it connect properly to OS X first, and I have no idea what the cause of your problem may be.
Maybe you should consult any FAQ or forum pages at Western Digital...

Anonymous said...

Hi There,

I've been using NTFS-3G 1.1120 since it's release and thought I should report some problems I've had with the Ublio version.

I am running 2 machines using 10.4.11 (Macbook Pro 2.2 GHz Intel) and 10.5.1 (Macbook 2 GHz Intel). The problems seem to be consistent on both.

When using caching, I find that there is the possibility that after unmounting the drive and then later remounting, the files I copied are not listed in the directories. I have to run chkdisk in windows to fix the drive, then the files are listed in top directory of the drive at file000.chk files. All the data seems to be there, but directories are lost.

It happens enough that I've decided to stop running caching and will try the Stable version for awhile.

Thanks
Shawn
www.spinchbeck.com

Erik said...

Shawn:

Have you noticed if this data loss occurs mainly after an OS X reboot, or if it has been shown to occur also when you unmount the drive normally (via disk utility or "diskutil unmount"/"umount")?

Because there is an issue that I'm working on currently which could lead to data loss (not specifically tied to the ublio build, but it is more vulnerable than the stable one)... when OS X is rebooted the ntfs-3g process isn't terminated cleanly (you can tell because it takes 30 seconds longer to reboot than normally). This means that there could potentially be stuff in the memory cache that has not yet been written down to disk when the process is forcibly terminated.

A quick workaround is to remember to unmount ntfs-3g file systems before rebooting.

collinhead said...

I have been having a problem with mounting a USB 2.0 drive-- I have uninstalled and reinstalled both the NTFS-3g driver and the whole Mac-FUSE core, and I can't figure out exactly how to fix it. I'm really new to OS X and am a recent convert from XP, so I don't know exactly what to do to troubleshoot.

I have 2 NTFS drives, one is an internal Boot Camp drive with XP on it, and it always mounts fine with 3g. If I go into disk utility it says it its format is Windows NT Filesystem 3G and it has perfect Read/Write access. But my USB drive, however, always mounts with the OS X driver and says the format is Windows NT File System (NTFS). It only has Read access. I have tried installing while the drive is mounted and while the drive isn't mounted, I've tried the Stable and Ublio releases-- I've tried a few combinations with mounting and I can't figure it out. It worked at one point a few weeks ago, but only for a few days and now I have this problem.

I am running OS X 10.5.1 on a new Intel iMac with a 160 GB external USB 2.0 Simpletech hard drive. I tried it while plugged into a hub and not plugged into a hub.

I hope that was descriptive enough.. Do you know what the problem might be? I'm sorry I haven't read through all 82 comments, and you have probably answered this question before.. I just would like it to work. Thanks for the package, it's great for the most part. Besides this USB prob ^_^ Thanks.

Anonymous said...

please tell me how to check the version of NTFS-3g that I have currently installed.

Unknown said...

OK, I got rid of the other problems with the HD and now I have one 230GB+ NTFS partition, but it doesn't mount in the finder.

It is visible in the Disk Utility however.

sick duckie said...

cant mount dmg files of NTFS structure, any suggestions?

Erik said...

collinhead:

The most common reason why a USB drive doesn't mount with NTFS-3G is that "someone" has pulled the plug on the drive without doing the "Safe remove hardware" procedure in Windows first.

Sometimes you just can't get Windows to release it's grip on the drive, and you are left with no option but to just pull the cable out of the drive... but then the drive will be marked as mounted and for safety reasons, ntfs-3g won't touch it (it might be inconsistent, and data loss may occur if we try to access a drive marked as "in use").
Best thing to do in those cases is to shutdown windows before removing the drive from the system.

If that's not the problem, you should try running chkdsk on the drive in windows.
If it still doesn't work after a chkdsk and a clean unmount, then we need to investigate a little further.

Erik said...

Donald J:

What does it say in Disk Utility?
See the above post about checking if your drive was unmounted properly in windows.

Erik said...

sick:

Do they mount with the internal NTFS driver? If you're using an UDIF .dmg file you can't expect it to work at all, since they contain an Apple Partition Map, and as far as I know, NTFS isn't a defined partition type for that system.
I have however mounted a disk clone (.img) in OS X using diskutil and ntfs-3g and it worked for me.

Please tell me what you're trying to achieve..

Unknown said...

Here's a screenshot of what I have in the Disk Utility window:
http://img180.imageshack.us/my.php?image=afbeelding1ir2.png
http://img174.imageshack.us/my.php?image=afbeelding2yg0.png

I'm currenty on a Dutch MacOSX so I hope it makes any sense to you, otherwise I wouldn't mind translating...

I use the eSATA connection on my PC and therefor I have no Safe Unmount on mac, cause it's not in the list. I only use the USB for power.
On my MacBook Pro I use a single USB cable to power and connect.

Erik said...

Donald J:

Hi again. Please download and install the newest release of NTFS-3G, 1.2129. It will give you some feedback when a mount operation does not succeed. You should be getting a dialog box in the Finder telling you what's wrong.

Unknown said...

OK I installed it and indeed it gave me an error box:
http://img509.imageshack.us/my.php?image=afbeelding1jl4.png][IMG]http://img509.imageshack.us/img509/8749/afbeelding1jl4.th.png

So I tried the terminal and got this:
http://img156.imageshack.us/my.php?image=afbeelding2dk3.png][IMG]http://img156.imageshack.us/img156/5922/afbeelding2dk3.th.png

Did I make a mistake in the command? Or should I continue doing something?

Erik said...

Donald J:

The easiest and safest thing to do is to connect the drive to Windows, and do the "Safe remove hardware" thing.

However if you would like to try a force mount, try this command:

sudo /usr/local/bin/ntfs-3g /dev/disk1s1 "/Volumes/D-POCKET 5" -oforce,default_permissions

Make sure that your drive is connected as "/dev/disk1", and that the folder "/Volumes/D-POCKET 5" exists (you may have to create it).

Please post follow-ups to this thread as comments on the new NTFS-3G version post instead of this one.

Anonymous said...

Great software.... You're the man coming from Alladins'lamp?

johannes said...

I force mounted my usb external drive on the promt now it appears in windows only after a long while and if I as much as select it in my computer explorer stops responding for a couple of minutes (in vista and XP same problem). I'm running intel OSX 10.5.6 and works in OSX but not in windows anymore this is a big issue for me I don't have space to reformat it :( if you can't help me I'll be forced to buy a new drive just to reformat it :S THANKS IN ADVANCE //johannes

johannes said...

Update it doesn't even show up in fusion XP and unmounting won't respond.

Erik said...

johannes:

This version (1.1120) is very old, and I can't respond to questions concerning such and old version.
Please upgrade to the latest version (2009.2.1 Update 1)

Generally though, I'd advice you to run chkdsk in Windows, and check for bad sectors.
If Windows locks up when accessing the drive, I would suspect that your drive has some bad sectors, in which case you should backup your data and replace the drive.

Anonymous said...

dyld: Library not loaded: /usr/local/lib/libfuse.2.dylib
Referenced from: /usr/local/bin/ntfs-3g
Reason: image not found

What does this mean?