Tuesday, January 19, 2010

NTFS-3G for Mac OS X 2010.1.16

Note: This is an important bugfix release which solves the issue described in KB974729.

What's new since 2009.11.14:
  • All in the NTFS-3G release notes.

  • In particular, this release solves the problem where NTFS-3G in rare cases renders an NTFS volume unmountable in Windows Vista and Windows 7, as described in KB974729.
    Users are encouraged to apply the hotfix provided by Microsoft, designed to fix the issue for existing drives.

  • Bugfix: Formatting NTFS volumes failed for some people because of a bug in the formatting utility.

The development of NTFS-3G for Mac OS X is funded by Tuxera Ltd.

Many of you have probably noticed that we now have a commercially supported counterpart to NTFS-3G, Tuxera NTFS for Mac.
Tuxera NTFS for Mac builds on the reliable NTFS-3G code base, but has several premium enhancements. The most important one is the new high performance caching layer which makes Tuxera NTFS at least twice as fast as cached NTFS-3G, but in many cases boosts performance even more (see: performance comparison).
The Tuxera NTFS for Mac caching layer also eliminates the need to choose between safety (in the event of a power outage or system crash) and performance, which is a choice you'll have to make in NTFS-3G.
Read more...

Download:System requirements:
  • Mac OS X 10.4/10.5/10.6 (10.6 requires that you do not use the 64-bit kernel), running on an Intel or PowerPC computer.
The package has been tested with Mac OS X 10.4.11/PowerPC/Intel, Mac OS X 10.5.8/PowerPC and Mac OS X 10.6.2/Intel/64-bit Intel.
NTFS-3G includes and depends on MacFUSE.

Information on how to install and use NTFS-3G for Mac OS X can be found in the User Guide.
If you are having problems with NTFS-3G, then please write a forum post explaining your problems in the Tuxera Forums (or post the question as a blog comment if you're just unsure of how things work).

Known issues:
  • After installing ntfs-3g, all NTFS drives will disappear from the "Startup Disk" preference pane. Disabling or uninstalling ntfs-3g brings them back. It seems that this issue can't be solved, but only worked around since the Startup Disk preference pane doesn't recognize file system drivers that are not provided by Apple.
    Possible workarounds:
    • Holding down the Option key during boot (or Alt for non-Apple keyboards).

    • Intel users only: Install the rEFIt boot manager for better control of the boot process.

    • Using the command line utility bless (see man bless for more information)

10 comments:

Lainey said...

Hi Erik,

First of all - thanks very much for developing this product, it's exactly what I was looking for!

I've just downloaded the commercial Tuxera NTFS for Mac, and I'm in the process of installing it. I've read the accompanying pdf (both for it, and for the open-source NTFS-3G), and I have a few remaining questions that I was hoping you could help with.

Mainly: how much of a risk is it, to leave caching switched on?

I read your comments on this thread:
https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=3156578562014006371&postID=5375711282809821906&pli=1

with great interest, and I realise that it answers some of my concerns.

I'm slightly confused by this part, though:
"You can also turn off caching for individual drives... for instance you may see data integrity for your internal drive in the event of a system crash as high priority, while you may be more interested in high performance when communicating with external USB drives"

I'm installing the program to be able to write to large NTFS external drives, that connect via USB.

How would internal drives be potentially affected?

If something went wrong, while I was writing files to an external NTFS drive via this product, could data on my *internal* drive be affected?

Thanks again for your time!

Lainey

Junk Email said...

I downloaded NTFS-3G and I have an external HDD formatted in NTFS that I used for all my DVD backups items connected to my Mac (running Mac OS X 10.5.8). In any event, I was re-installing windows on my Laptop (which is a PC) and put the old copy of windows on the external drive. Well, I don't need it anymore and was trying to delete it but it won't delete. I have tried everything short of initializing the drive which I want to avoid so I dont lose all my DVD backups. It's in the trash but it just won't empty. I really do need some advice on this one. Any ideas?

Raymond said...

Do you working on building a package for ntfs-3g-2010.3.6?

m@ said...

Hey guys, if you have Snow Leopard I suggest you to use iNTFS.. just a click and it will enable the write native support without having to struggle with Terminal.

download it from here:
http://www.itecnologici.com/?p=674&langswitch_lang=en

Erik said...

TuxBastard:

I'm just curious... when have you ever needed to "struggle with the terminal" using this package?

Erik said...

Raymond, April 8, 2010 6:59 PM:

Unfortunately I haven't completed my git migration yet, but I will make a release as soon as everything is in order in my repositories.

m@ said...

@ Erik: No, I didn't mean ntfs-3g implies struggling with terminal. But enabling Snow Leopard Native Support usually does. iNTFS simply avoid this, which is a different approach from ntfs-3g. Both of them have pros and cons.

Powderflask said...

Thank-you!!
Worked perfectly.

elchicodelacassettera said...

Hi Erik,

I'm running Snow Leopard (64bits) and i can't read NTFS external USB disk. I've been looking around in a lot of forums but i can't find a solution. I really need 64bits kernell cause I'm using 8gb RAM (with 32bit kernell it doesn't work very well -lot of panic kernell-). Thanks!

Erik said...

HOLY SHIRT! + Original Tees +:

You don't need the 64-bit kernel until you have more than 32 GiB of RAM. However, we do support the 64-bit kernel in Tuxera NTFS for Mac. We will also launch a solution for NTFS-3G soon.