Monday, November 5, 2007

NTFS-3G 1.1104

Here comes the latest version of NTFS-3G for OS X.
This time I'm releasing two versions of the package: one "stable" build with no patches activated (except for some OS X specific ones), and one ublio build, which includes the ublio user space caching layer for performance enchancements.

The stable build is built only from code that have been tested extensively through the ntfs-3g testing process. The ublio build contains external code that offers performance enhancements, but that hasn't been put through the same extensive testing process, and thus is more likely to contain bugs.
When using the ublio build it is extremely important that you make sure that you unmount disks cleanly before removing them from the system.

Download NTFS-3G 1.1104 [stable]
Download NTFS-3G 1.1104 [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).

Other changes for this build:
  • 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.

  • Made the package more compatible with MacFUSE 1.0.0 and thus Leopard. Full compatibility can't be achieved due to an incompatibility issue between MacFUSE and NTFS-3G that I hope will be resolved in the next MacFUSE release.

This build includes:
ntfs-3g 1.1104 (patched)
ntfsprogs 1.13.1

94 comments:

Andreas said...

So is it possible to get ntfs writing working under Leopard now? I got an error about not being able to read the file when I tried. Which versions should i use of NTFS-3G and MacFUSE in such a case? Or am I better off waiting for the next point release, like you said?

Erik said...

Andreas:
Writing files to an NTFS drive should be possible with MacFUSE 1.0.0. Renaming files should work too.
Copying files from the NTFS volume can be done only from the command line if you use MacFUSE 1.0.0 (Tiger or Leopard doesn't matter).
Read more about the discussion on this problem here:
http://groups.google.com/group/macfuse-devel/browse_thread/thread/4961005a674791aa

sk said...

does this new patch address the problem of writing to ntfs under leopard? because after i change the following, i've been able to write quite successfully...of course, the copying part still only works via terminal.

6) Find line: local OPTIONS="default_permissions..."
7) Replace the whole line with:
local OPTIONS="local,auto_xattr,defer_permissions"

Erik said...

sk:
Yes, that problem has (hopefully) been fixed.

Unknown said...

Does this package still support putting the .ntfs-readonly file at the root of drives you want to remain under control of the original ntfs system?

Andreas said...

Thanks Erik. I'm now copying happily under Leopard again :)

Erik said...

joel:
It did so last time I checked. :> I haven't tested that feature for this release but yes, it should work still.

Unknown said...

I was under the impression that with MacFuse 0.4.0. read/write would work well, but it doesn't. Here are my observations. Hope this isn't completely old news.

> MacFuse 0.4.0 and NTFS-3G 1.1104 catacombae ublio:

Can read from ntfs, but not write. Caching on or off, problem persist. Changed a folder to a "Unix executable file" when trying to download a file in it in Opera.

"The Finder cannot complete the operation because some data in "filename.txt" could not be read or written.
(Error code -36)

> MacFuse 0.4.0 and NTFS-3G 1.1104 catacombae stable:

Same problem.

> MacFuse 1.0.0 and NTFS-3G 1.1104 catacombae stable and
> MacFuse 1.0.0 and NTFS-3G 1.1104 catacombae ublio:

Can write, but not read.


I hope the new MacFuse will come and fix this.

Erik said...

mrelwood:
Does is work for you copying files to the NTFS volumes in Finder? Because that works for me.

I'm experiencing something similar to what you described when trying to save a file from Firefox down to the NTFS drive. It doesn't report any error, but the file is nowhere to be found. I'll look into that.

Unknown said...

I am using mac 10.4. It doesn't show my usb hard disk, after installation.
any idea?

Unknown said...

Erik, Finder can write and rename ntfs with Macfuse 1.0.0. and NTFS-3G 1.1104 in Leopard.

I noticed that Opera had actually saved the file I downloaded with the selected folder's name and without extension. The folder is now gone and none of the four restoring programs I had could locate the overwritten files. Nothing valuable, thank god, just downloaded programs and plugins.

Erik said...

mrelwood:
Are you saying that you had a folder in which you had some stuff saved from before... and then you tried to save a file from Opera into the folder and after that, the folder and its contents disappeared?

If that's a correct interpretation of your problem, it sounds _very_ serious. Please confirm that I have read you correctly.

Any data loss should be treated as a showstopper issue. If you've had data loss, please run a badblocks test using a linux live cd (SystemRescueCD for example) or similar to rule out the possibility that your drive is malfunctioning.

Also, which build did you use? The stable or the ublio one?

Erik said...

figo2476:
First, your drive may be in a "mounted" state after an unclean disconnect from a Windows computer. You always have to use the "Safe remove" feature before ejecting drives from Windows if you want NTFS-3G to be able to read them. It won't mount drives that are marked as in use for data integrity reasons.

If that's not the problem, please enable debug logging using "Tools/Enable Debug Logging.command" from the install .dmg. Then you eject and reconnect your drive, wait a few second and see if a log file has turned up at "/var/log/ntfs-3g-debug.log".
Also, please tell me what happens in Disk Utility when you connect the drive. Any observations will be helpful.

Anonymous said...

ntfs-3g 1.1104 (stable) work great with the new macfuse 1.1.1. I can now read and write to me ntfs drive. macfuse 1.0.0 was no good for me.

Unknown said...

> mrelwood:
> Are you saying that you had a folder
> in which you had some stuff saved
> from before... and then you tried to
> save a file from Opera into the
> folder and after that, the folder and
> its contents disappeared?

Yes, that is what happened. The folder "Audio" was overwritten with a file "Audio." that had no extension. The file "Audio." had the exact size of the file I was trying to download.

> please run a badblocks test using a
> linux live cd (SystemRescueCD for
> example) or similar to rule out the
> possibility that your drive is
> malfunctioning.

I must get into that later, as I don't have the mentioned CD. My computer is a MacBook, bought about 6 months ago, and the ntfs partition is the one I use with Bootcamp.

> Also, which build did you use? The
> stable or the ublio one?

I'm sorry but I don't remember, I have been switching between them quite a bit during these tests. However, MacFuse core was the old version 0.4.0.

I use a pre-beta version of Opera, 9.0b build 4517.

Wesley said...

I can see that MacFUSE has now been updated to 1.1. Can erik confirm anonymous' report that MacFUSE 1.1.1 + NTFS-3G 1.1104 in Leopard works correctly now?

Unknown said...

MacFuse 1.1.1. + NTFS-3G 1.1104 (Ublio)
work marvellously on Leopard. Read 20Mb/s and write 10Mb/s with Macbook's internal ntfs partition. Files and folders can be moved, copied and renamed normally in Finder.

Erik said...

Since you all seem to be able to confirm that MacFUSE works fine now, I have changed the requirements text on the blog post to include OS X 10.5 and MacFUSE 1.1 (1.1.0/1.1.1 that is).
(I haven't tested it myself as I'm at work, and my mac is at home.)

Anonymous said...

mrelwood: when ntfs-3g is instructed to overwrite a directory by a file then the driver must deny the request with EISDIR error ("The destination is a directory and it was tried to be overwritten by a file" error message). This is how it works on Linux and I'd bet the same is true on OS X (I'll send a test suite to Erik, so we can confirm this later).

So I think you probably have a problem with the pre-beta Opera release. Linux users did report major problems with alpha and beta quality Opera browsers. So I suggest to submit the bug report to Opera if you can't reproduce it with any other softwares.

Yes, they also do make very serious programming faults, just like anybody else, for instance this Apple data loss bug: http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/11/05/2328259

Unknown said...

> So I think you probably have a
> problem with the pre-beta Opera
> release.

I thought it must have something to do with the issue.

> So I suggest to submit the bug report
> to Opera

Done. I know beta versions are sometimes fatal, but I just... must..have...latest... ;o)

sk said...

Quote:

mrelwood said...

MacFuse 1.1.1. + NTFS-3G 1.1104 (Ublio)
work marvellously on Leopard. Read 20Mb/s and write 10Mb/s with Macbook's internal ntfs partition. Files and folders can be moved, copied and renamed normally in Finder.


this is really great news! thks alot erik!! I can finally get my info back from my friend's hdd!! I'll update on the progress when i go over. Is there any monitoring program for read/write speed for mac osx 10.5?

Anonymous said...

There is a build in one "sk" its called Activity Monitor :P

Anonymous said...

I can confirm it as well! works like a charm!
hallelujah!!

Thanks a lot for the good work!

Unknown said...

MacFuse 1.1.1 + ntfs-3g 1.1104 ublio under leopard is working fine for me ...
Really fast, drive is no longer shown as a "network folder/drive". It's perfect ;)

Anonymous said...

using ntfs-3g 1.1104[ublio]
and MacFUSE-Core-10.5-1.1.1.dmg

working fine yesterday (some read writing operations).

BUT today the folder are not accessible. I tried to copy the files from my backup DVD and the explorer says that the files (and folder) are present, but i can't see it. After that info i tried to check the volume (chkdsk) with the result that the files where restored (and some folders are created: c:\found.000; c:\.Trashes; c:\.fseventsd).

Carlo said...

problems here...

my external HD (500 GB MyBook) is recognized (I can see it in /Volumes/ and in Disk Utility, as well as in System profiler) but not mounted and appears as non accessible (insufficient profiles).

tried disconnecting, disinstalling, reinstalling, everything. Using latest macfuse 1.1.1 on Leo and latest ntfs-3g 1.1104 w/ublio (also tried without ublio, same non-result)

any suggestion?

thanks anyway for your excellent work

Carlo

Erik said...

Anonymous, November 8, 2007 6:30 PM:
I have experienced the exact same problem once, but I haven't been able to reproduce it. Until now, I thought it had to do with a bad hard disk (I recently replaced my old hard drive due to bad sectors). It's starting to look more like an ublio bug, as I have had no reports on this with the stable version (this is the reason I won't call the ublio version "stable").
Please check for bad sectors on your disk (SystemRescueCD + the badblocks utility is probably the best way to do that) so we can rule out the possibility that your disk is damaged.

Erik said...

Carlo:
Did you check the Troubleshooting / FAQ post? Did you ensure that the drive was correctly unmounted in Windows before it was unplugged?

Carlo said...

erik: The drive mounted correctly under Tiger until I installed Leo, and hasn't been mounted under Win for a few months, so I would exclude the issue, and I would also exclude the damage issue.
C

Anonymous said...

I'm the one from "Anonymous, November 8, 2007 6:30 PM:" who has problems with filesystem corruption and
1.1104[ublio] build. Today I tried
the latest builds but the partition does not mount automatically on system boot. I also tried the "Enable NTFS-3G.command" but OSX 10.5 use the internal NTFS-Readonly driver.
ntfs-3g is correctly installed (verified with terminal)

Anonymous said...

addition for November 9, 2007 3:02 PM:

i tried the latest stable builds from
http://macntfs-3g.blogspot.com/ but this does't work

neptune2000 said...

It looks like the latest build is broken under Leopard. As suggested I installed the latest MacFuse for leopard (v. 1.1.1) and the ublio version of the NTFS-3g 1.1104. Now no disk is recognized at all. I plug in a disk. Nothing happens. Using Disk Utility shows no disk connected. I run both command file to turn on caching and turn off debug.

Looks like I'll go back to Mascfuse 0.4 and the earlier NTFS-3g.

Erik said...

Carlo:
That's odd. Please turn on debug output and check the log file (/var/log/ntfs-3g-debug.log) for any output. You can send it to me if it doesn't make sense to you. My mail can be found at my regular page: http://hem.bredband.net/catacombae

Erik said...

Anonymous, November 9, 2007 3:02 PM:

The "Enable NTFS-3G.command" is only applicable if you have previously disabled NTFS-3G manually. It comes enabled from the start.
Whenever something doesn't mount as you would have wanted it to, please turn on debug output ("Tools/Enable debug output.command"), try to mount the drive and check the log file (/var/log/ntfs-3g-debug.log) for any clues.

Erik said...

neptune2000:

Please turn on debug output and tell us what output you get in the /var/log/ntfs-3g-debug.log file when trying to mount your drive.

Erik said...

To all:
Generally, when something doesn't work, and you're using the ublio build, please try out the stable build as well before reporting problems. That way it's easier to track ublio-related problems.

Unknown said...

I am having a weird problem with ntfs-3g. I am running MacFuse 10.5 - 1.1.1 and the NTFS-3G 1.1104 stable package from this site on Mac OS 10.5 Leopard.

I am having problems mounting my USB external hard disks. They do not appear on the desktop after the mounting script runs at startup. The Disk Utility shows the hard drives as mounted, but the icon is not the normal USB external drive icon, but instead a blue folder with a red circle containing a white hyphen over the top of it.

If I look at the information for the drive, everything looks normal, except the Journaled field. It is "yes", where as before it was "no". If I have a look in the Volumes directory, I can see the drives there (with the same blue folder icon). However when I select them they do not go into the drive like all the other drive icons do.

If I have a look at the permissions on these folders I notice that the system, admin and everyone users have No Access. I cannot change these values. I can however add my own user into this list and give it Read and Write privileges. When I do this, the file becomes a folder with nothing in it.

At first this problem was only happening to one of my 3 NTFS formatted external HDD's, but now it is happening to all of them. Reconnecting the drives does not fix the problem, neither does restarting the finder.

The only drive that has been consistently working is my Windows XP partition, which is a partition on my internal MacBook Pro HDD. This drive has been giving me no problems at all. Prior to my upgrade to Leopard all my drives were working correctly. The drives still work properly in Windows XP.

Any help would be appreciated.

Carlo said...

erik: I'm out of town at the moment, tomorrow night I will experiment. thanks a lot for your support.

C

neptune2000 said...

>please turn on debug output ("Tools/Enable debug output.command"), try to mount the drive and check the log file (/var/log/ntfs-3g-debug.log) for any clues.

1. I turned ON debug:
No logs appeared. Disk does no show in disk Utility.

2. Then I turned OFF ublio file system caching:
No logs appeared. Disk does no show in disk Utility.

3. Then Disabled NTFS-3G:
No logs appeared. Disk does no show in disk Utility.

I'm stomped!

next I'll remove NTFS-3G and reboot.

neptune2000 said...

Removed NTFS-3G. Drive came back.

Anonymous said...

this caching with the ubilio one, does it also boost firewire performance?

Erik said...

neptune2000: Strange indeed. Please drop me a mail at the address displayed at http://hem.bredband.net/catacombae so we can sort this issue out.

Erik said...

sk:
Yes, hopefully. You tell me. :>

Unknown said...

I am using the ublio patched ntfs-3g with MacFuse 1.1.1 under Leopard. Everything is working as it should with average write rate of 12MB/sec and average read rate of 19.50MB/sec. There's one thing that doesn't work though. None of my international-named files can be copied from my NTFS-formatted external drive. Such files CAN be copied to the NTFS drive, after which, they can be copied back just like any english-named files. Any ideas on this?

Erik said...

Jae-wan:
If those filenames have accents and umlauts in them, I do have an idea, because OS X and Windows handles these file names differently. OS X expects all such filenames to be stored in decomposed form, while Windows prefers precomposed characters (actually, I don't think Windows bothers about that, but it usually handlese precomposed ones). I have had such issues in HFSExplorer ( http://hem.bredband.net/catacombae ) and solved them by doing a decomposed -> precomposed conversion. In this case I think something different is needed, but it's at the ntfs-3g level, and probably not anything that can be solved by modifying mount options.

However, if the same issue appears with for example chinese characters, which have no decomposed representation, then it's some other problem. Perhabs you should try the .ntfs-locale trick to set a proper locale for ntfs-3g to use. See the post Troubleshooting / FAQ.

Please report back whether the problem occurs with chinese characters or not.

Anonymous said...

hey erik, i'm unable to access any drives now - it says i don't have sufficient privilages..

Erik said...

sk:
Contact me through the mail address found at http://hem.bredband.net/catacombae and we'll sort it out.

Anonymous said...

hey erik, somehow, the drivers are working fine, but while watching prisonbreak off an ntfs partition, the whole drive suddenly unmounted (i think this is due to a hardware prob) and remounted. i now cannot see any files on the ntfs partition. i've tried running ntfsfix but this is what i get:

Macintosh:~ leader288$ /usr/local/bin/ntfsfix /Volumes/MEDIA
Mounting volume... Error opening partition device : Is a directory
Failed to startup volume : Is a directory
FAILED
Attempting to correct errors... Error opening partition device : Is a directory
FAILED
Failed to startup volume : Is a directory
Volume is corrupt. You should run chkdsk.

any help?

Jody said...

This may be a dumb question, but is there an easy way to rename my internal bootcamp drive to something other than "Untitled" Or at lease change where it mounts to so that I can change the name?

Erik said...

Jody:
Yes, an easy way is to boot into Windows and rename your drive to something meaningful. :)

Erik said...

sk:
You can't run ntfsfix on a mount point... you have to run it on the device (i.e. in the form /dev/diskXsY). That's why you get all these "Error opening partition device: Is a directory".

Anonymous said...

so i have to unmout the partition? or run it on the whole drive. but my drive is artitioned into both ntfs and hfs+

Unknown said...

@erik: I already tried with the .ntfs-locale trick with no success. But I can confirm that files with chinese character name work without any issues, just like the english-named files.

Would switching the font Finder uses for Korean fonts to another one supported by windows work? I searched around some Korean Mac OS X forums and found out that many people are unhappy with the AppleGothic font with Tiger/Leopard, and many of them switch to a font Vista uses or from other source.

Anonymous said...

I need some help. I can't see any file/filename/directory at all. But I know they are there. I tried to create a new folder under Leopard it would appear then disappear. Any ideas?

Wesley said...

jae-wan, I think the issues with Korean characters is actually related to the 'decomposed form' that erik was talking about. I've observed that in OS X, each Korean character is stored by jamo (e.g. 정 would be stored as ㅈㅓㅇ) while Windows just stores the whole character composed. The decomposed form is observed when accessing a Mac via SSH from Windows.

Since jae-wan couldn't copy files with composed-form character names straight off the NTFS volume, it could be that OS X can't handle it.

However, it's interesting to note that copying files with Korean names (created in Windows) off a FAT32 volume isn't a problem, so I guess FAT32 volumes don't store names like that?

I hope something can be done to fix this problem as well, because I occasionally deal with NTFS volumes containing files with Korean names.

Erik said...

sk:
Yes, of course you have to unmount the drive first. :) Then run ntfsfix on the _partition_ where your ntfs file system resides. In a standard boot camp install that would be /dev/disk0s3
I would be a little bit cautious about ntfsfix though... I've had reports of it trashing drives.

Erik said...

Jae-wan:
As Wesley Woo-Duk said, korean characters can be decomposed into jamo form, so the same applies to them as to european characters with accents.
I'm going to do some tests myself, and then, when I have the time, try to write a translation layer enabled for OS X only which decomposes the characters when reading filenames, and composes when creating them. It will be tricky and requires a lot of forethought... for example what happens when you have two files in the NTFS file system with identical filenames, where one is stored in decomposed and the other in composed form...

Erik said...

Wesley Woo-Duk:
You provide an intresting clue. I guess one could peek at the OSX FAT32 driver, which is "open source" (at least one can look at the source... APSL) and see how it handles composition and decomposition.
Do you know if the internal OS X NTFS read only driver can handle korean filenames correctly?

Anonymous said...

I have some problems running swedish versions of both win XP and Leopard. Folder names and such are often cut-off and some files can't be read without first copying them to the os x partition.

Unknown said...

@erik, wesley woo-duk

The OS X NTFS driver has no problems copying the decomposed-form named files. I have no trouble copying Korean-named (or Japanese-named) files from NTFS volume to Mac Volume when I use the OS X NTFS driver. Same can't be said for the current NTFS-3G driver. Curious how that works.....

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

Don't you mean composed-form named (made from Windows) files? I thought you already said the decomposed-form named (made from Mac) files had no trouble copying from and to an NTFS-3G volume.

Erik said...

Wesley Woo-Duk:
I'm sure that's what he meant. I can confirm this issue for names with swedish characters.

The problem with composed->decomposed conversion is that NTFS doesn't care about composed or decomposed form. It happily permits two files with names that look identical from the OS X finder decomposed perspective... but that are in two different composition forms.
You can even create a file name containing a mixture of precomposed and decomposed characters in ntfs.
The questions is how to handle these cases... a naive implementation would just show a lot of identically named files to the Finder, and I'm not sure the Finder would find that very pleasant. (It would probably crash or start to act strange... if I know the Finder correctly.)

In the end, it's all because of the Finder enforcing certain file naming conventions that are only applicable to HFS/HFS+/HFSX volumes.
The Finder should let go of its HFS-centric past and permit filenames with any (at least almost any) unicode character.
After all, you can copy these files from the Terminal, so it's not an operating system issue, but a Finder issue.

Anonymous said...

I have a strange problem. Internal partition (Bootcamp) is mounted as ntfs-3g but my external usb drive only mounts using macos ntfs. So therefor I cannot write to that drive. Latest macfuse 10-5.1.1.1 and NTFS3G 1.1104.

Any ideas?

Erik said...

sm0deo:
Sure, my first thought is that you haven't unmounted the drive cleanly in Windows with "safe remove hardware". Or the drive needs to be repaired with chkdsk. Did you read the blog post "Troubleshooting / FAQ"?

Anonymous said...

i fixed my volume using chkdisk, got the "no permission" error (a blue folder with a stop sign over it) and used ntfsfix on it. it worked, but i found that several folders were, in accessible, although the overall size and no files on the disk is the same as b4...not i'm trying to recover the files using ntfs file recovery programs (any help?). other than that its pretty fine.. :/

Anonymous said...

Erik:

Yes, chkdsk did the magic. Funny though, the disk was previosly mounted on Tiger with FUSE 0.4.0 and NTFS 1.0 and it worked well. Havent been mounted on windows for a while. And it was cleanly unmounted. The file ._.Thrashes was the bad guy.

Tack o god jul!

Anonymous said...

since I upgrade to OSX 10.5.1 the your latest stable version works here on startup. I hope for a MacFuse update to solve the chkdsk problem on windows

Carlo said...

erik: I finally managed to chkdsk the mybook, and this solved the problem. Strange, because it mounted fine under tiger, but I read somebody else solved the problem in the same way.

thanks again, best

Carlo

Carlo said...

well, now that everything works it only remains to find a way to enable my shiny 500GB mybook in time machine :)

Anonymous said...

I am not a programmer; just a Final Cut Pro user who needs to store > 4 GB files on an NTFS HD.

I installed MacFUSE-Core-10.4-1.1.0 & NTFS-3G 1.1104 [stable] on Mac OS X 10.4.10. Virgin installs; never had an earlier version before.

My NTFS HD won't mount on my Finder desktop, or appear in any Save As dialogs.

However I can see that it's there in Disk Utility.

Any ideas what else I can do to get it to mount in the Finder?

Erik said...

Anonymous, November 19, 2007 8:02 PM:

As you may notice reading these comments, the most common cause of this kind of issue is that the NTFS drive has not been cleanly unmounted in Windows prior to detachment. You need to do "Safe remove hardware" before unplugging, always (you risk losing data otherwise, and the drive will be marked as in use).

If that doesn't work, run chkdsk in windows on the drive and try again. If it still doesn't work... well, then we need to find out more about your drive. :)

Unknown said...

Fabulous speed! Thank you.

Running on following:
MacOS X 10.4.11
MacFUSE-Core-10.4-1.1.0.dmg
NTFS-3G 1.1104 [ublio]

Copying in Finder froma nad to NTFS drive: OK
Renaming files on NTFS drive: OK
Deleting on NTFS drive: no trash only directly (which is what you want anyway)

I have no tools to measure the transferspeed but it is really fast. I am a happy puppy.

Cheers

Anonymous said...

ntfs-3g 1.1120 is out. Can your update your package?

Anonymous said...

I see only NTFS-3G 1.1104 on:
http://macntfs-3g.blogspot.com/

Where can I download NTFS-3G 1.1120 for Mac OS X 10.4.10?


> Anonymous said...

> ntfs-3g 1.1120 is out. Can your update your package?
> November 19, 2007 11:13 PM

Erik said...

Will you guys take it easy? I haven't had time to build and test the 1.1120 release yet.
What specific feature are you so worked up about that you barely can wait for it?

Anonymous said...

Um, any help? it seems that my ntfs drive isn't mounting using ntfs-3g...

Anonymous said...

OK Erik, first doing the "safe remove hardware" from the PC did the trick: it now mounts on the Mac desktop. (Slow as molasses though - about ten seconds to mount, and copies large files at 1 MB/sec. ... but we're aware that slow speed is par for the course for now.)

I was surprised that "safe remove hardware" was needed, because when I formatted the HD I set the driver properties to disable the write cache for quick removal & not needing the safe remove hardware button in the task bar. I wonder, what's up with that?

When I unmount the HD and then use Apple Disk Utility to remount it, I get the spinning beach ball for 10-20 seconds and it gives an error message about being unable to mount the drive, but it does mount. I think I recall from reading about the way MacFUSE works is that you're going to tell me that this is because MacFUSE really is treating the HD as a network device and not like a local hard disk volume, so I need to ask you, do we need to stay away from Disk Utility (and instead just unplug/replug the cable)?

Erik said...

Anonymous, November 21, 2007 7:40 PM:

I guess the thing is that from the outside, there's no way that ntfs-3g can know if the drive was previously mounted with write cache enabled or not. It only sees that the volume is marked as in use because proper unmounting was never done.
Naturally, it assumes the worst.

It's the most logical behavior, because going on to mount the drive could possibly result in data loss. You can force mount the drive from the command line if you know for sure that the drive is ok, but there's no GUI way to do that at the moment.

And no, you shouldn't stay away from disk utility. I use it all the time to unmount/remount my ntfs volume during testing. If it behaves strangely, please enable debug logging through the script supplied in the release .dmg and check the log for any clues why it behaves that way. It works for me. :>

Anonymous said...

hey erik, i tried mounting other ntfs drives, but it doesn't show on the desktop. a little check into disk utility showed that the disk had a blue folder with a stop sign over it, and mounted using the ntfs3g driver. plugging back my repaired ntfs drive, it shows that its mounted with the default mac ntfs driver. any help?

Eloom123 said...

@sk
I was having this problem as well, here is how I fixed it:

Drive not mounting and appearing in Disk Utility as a blue folder with red cross through it issue:
This happens because the drive has not been correctly unmounted. To fix this, boot into Windows or plug the hard drive into a Windows machine, then use the "Safely Remove Hardware" feature to correctly unmount the drive. After this Mac OS should mount the drive correctly.

Drive mounting with Mac OS Read Only Driver problem:
This has happened to me a few times, and appears to occur when problems occur on the disk. I'm guessing this is a safeguard in ntfs-3g where it refuses to mount when it realises there has been a problem? Anyway to fix this you again need to boot into Windows, and this time run checkdisk on the drive. For me this has happened automatically at boot, but if it does not, or if you have plugged the drive into another Windows machine, then run it from command prompt (Start->Run, type 'cmd' and push OK, then type 'chkdsk X: /f', where X is the letter of the drive in question).

Hope this helps

Cheers,
Ben

Anonymous said...

thks ben, i'll try the above out and will let you know how it goes.

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?

Unknown said...

Could someone share a light about the following announcement?
># 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.

Could someone explain where the 'Tools' directory is? Should this be in /System/Library/Filesystems/ntfs-3g.fs?

I can only find a ntfs-3g.util script over there.

What options should be added to the tools command to reverse to the ntfs driver from os x?

Anonymous said...

Erik,

Thank you for the great package - works every time for me. One request - can you tell me how to rename my NTFS drive to something better than "Untitled" - ideally automatically at startup? I'm using a Firewire drive and Leopard.

Thanks!

Erik said...

DC in Japan:

One question first... since you're commenting on 1.1104, have you had problems with 1.1120, which is the newest release?

Renaming the drive in Windows will do the trick... the same name should show up in OS X. You can also change the label from within OS X with the command line utility ntfslabel which you can find at /usr/local/sbin/ntfslabel (included in this package). You will have to unmount the drive before trying to change the label with ntfslabel.

DC in Japan said...

Sorry - I am using the latest version - posted my question in the wrong section! I'll try your suggestions and post any follow-ups in the right place (hopefully!)

Anonymous said...

happy new year to all!

Anonymous said...

OK, everything was going OK.

10.5.1, MacPro, 7 GB RAM, all 4 drives bays filled. Formatted WD 750 GB drive in Leopard BootCamp.

Installed latest MacFuse and stable, then ublio NTFS-3G.

Copied 3, 80 GB folders to drive, easily.

Created subfolders within main folder on this NTFS drive. I have done nothing since, go to work and come home and NTFS drive is mounted, can see main folder, but no folders (files) within.

What gives?, the drive reports 240 GB used, but can not see the folder contents. Does one have to eject the NTFS volume every time one logs out or reboots, is that an issue.

I have uninstalled MacFuse and and NTFS -3G and re-installed and to no avail.

How can run NTFS utility on this, I do not thonk it can be done via BootCamp, perhaps so, move the drive to a Windows box, not a big fan of that.

thanks in advance

Anonymous said...

OK, everything was going OK.

10.5.1, MacPro, 7 GB RAM, all 4 drives bays filled. Formatted WD 750 GB drive in Leopard BootCamp.

Installed latest MacFuse and stable, then ublio NTFS-3G.

Copied 3, 80 GB folders to drive, easily.

Created subfolders within main folder on this NTFS drive. I have done nothing since, go to work and come home and NTFS drive is mounted, can see main folder, but no folders (files) within.

What gives?, the drive reports 240 GB used, but can not see the folder contents. Does one have to eject the NTFS volume every time one logs out or reboots, is that an issue.

I have uninstalled MacFuse and and NTFS -3G and re-installed and to no avail.

How can I run an NTFS utility on this, I do not think it can be done via BootCamp, perhaps so, move the drive to a Windows box, not a big fan of that.

thanks in advance

Erik said...

macguitarman:

I'm not sure that I understand your problem completely.
I understand that you are running Leopard on a Mac Pro, with a Boot Camp setup... so you're dual booting OS X and Windows? Sounds fair.

From within OS X, you created a lot of new files and folders, and now you can't view some of them? Can you view them from within Windows?

Anyway, even though I can't really make out your configuration and what happened from what you wrote, some general advice is:
- If you're only using internal drives, don't use the ublio build... it will hardly give you any performance increase at all.
- If you suspect that something has gone wrong on the NTFS drive, the only program that can fix it nicely should be chkdsk in Windows, or commercial third party tools. If you're using an NTFS drive in OS X, I assume that it is periodically connected to some computer running Windows... otherwise I fail to see the point in using NTFS on OS X.
- You should not need to eject the drive each time you reboot with the standard build. Probably not with the ublio build either, but there is a bigger risk that some cached data is not written to disk then... I will investigate if there's any risk of data loss in that situation.

Anonymous said...

Erik,

Thanks for the response.

I know it sounds weird, why would one need or use an NTFS format on Mac OS X, just use HFS Plus.

and there is only one reason I can think of and that is my situation.

I am a video engineer / media producer and have a lot of original media that I need to put on a drive for a client of mine, they want it on a Windows format, since they are a Windows shop.

Now FAT32 (while able to be seen from both Mac OS X and Windows) seems like the format to use, for video it is actually useless, especially if you have file sizes in excess of 4GB (that is the the FAT32 limitation), and in video you do, regularly.

Since I am a systems engineer, I realize I could simply put this SATA II drive in a Windows box and copy the data over my Gig E network, and that is really probably the best way to do this.

But I don't have a Windows box available, and not one with SATA II (although I might have one at work that I can get if need be).

Thus the Boot Camp deal. I formatted the WD Caviar 750 GB drive in Leopard Boot Camp and Win XP SP2. Formatted NTF and I (actually went ahead and installed Windows on this drive, really did not want to).

I then installed MacFUSE, easy

I then installed NTFS-3G, stable

Dragged 1 at a time, 3, 80 plus GB folders and it was copying, it seemed slow, so I uninstalled stable build and installed ublio and it copied fully, a little faster this time, all folders and files were present.

I did create a folder on the root of the NTFS volume and then folders within that folders, only a few, not many and move the copied folders into those folders.

Everything was fine, went to work, came home, opened up the NTFS volume, called Untitled (boot camp does this)
and no folders or files can be seen within the the main root level folder, even though OS X Get Info reports 240 plus GB's are used.

I also deleted, all the Windows system files, after I copied the data over, feeling I did not care if this drive was a bootable in WIndows or not, it should not have had an affect, I would think.

The question is, and I'll have to check, can Boot Camp recognize any Additional NTFS volumes within ones Mac.

If not I'll need a dedicated Windows box to copy this data over, or recopy it again, with the NTFS-3G method and remove the drive right away, although how can I be sure it will be seen by a Windows XP box, unless I actually test that.

Keep in mind, this is a Mac Pro with all 4 internal SATA II drives filled, 3 HFS plus, 1 NTFS, there no external drives.

At this point I do not have a drive that is a sole WIndows Boot Camp drive, since my original data is on that drive and my only true backup.

Thanks again,

macguitarman@mac.com

The Barbar said...

waaaah, I installed macfuse and after i installed ntf 3g. after reboot, my osx sho only the dock, no finder bar! help how to remove ntfs3g via terminal?

Erik said...

asskick:

A quick way:

sudo rm -r /System/Library/Filesystems/ntfs-3g.fs

Why did you install this old version?