We have just opened the doors to our online shop, where you can purchase a Tuxera NTFS for Mac license.
Tuxera NTFS for Mac aims to be the highest performance NTFS solution available on Mac OS X. It builds upon the proven stability and maturity of NTFS-3G, enhancing it with significant performance improvements and a better integration with Mac OS X, including extended support for Mac attributes, putting files in the trash bin, etc.
By purchasing Tuxera NTFS for Mac you're also supporting the development of its open source counterpart NTFS-3G, enabling the two projects to move forward side by side.
Will you guys stop developing / evolving / supporting the free NTFS-3G?
ReplyDeleteHi Erik,
ReplyDeleteNot sure if this is the right place to ask such questions, but I'll give it a shot anyway.
1. The Tuxera site mentions that the current NTFS kernel driver in Linux and Snow Leopard has been in development by Tuxera since 2000. If this is true, how does the new Tuxera NTFS product relate to the kernel driver already in Snow Leopard?
2. Is the Tuxera NTFS product a kernel level NTFS driver, as opposed the current NTFS-3G project, which runs in user space on top of MacFUSE?
3. It almost seems to me that the Tuxera product and the NTFS driver in Snow Leopard are competitors in a sense. I've read about a way to enable NTFS write support in the Snow Leopard driver, but it's buggy. If this write support was ever to be completed, wouldn't the Tuxera NTFS product suddenly become moot?
Thanks for your time!
Carlos Eduardo:
ReplyDeleteNo, NTFS-3G will continue to co-evolve with Tuxera NTFS.
The two projects need each other... Tuxera NTFS will hopefully also finance the NTFS-3G project so that further development is possible.
Anonymous, October 15, 2009 2:37 AM:
ReplyDeleteHi,
1. The NTFS kernel driver in Linux and Snow Leopard has been developed primarily by Anton Altaparmakov, who is now part of Tuxera. He wrote the NTFS driver in Snow Leopard a few years ago, but it's a different codebase from NTFS-3G.
We have been investigating if we can maintain the kernel driver code as part of the 'Tuxera NTFS' product.
2. No, Tuxera NTFS builds upon NTFS-3G, so it's a userspace driver.
This however seems to matter less and less, as I already have recorded peformance numbers that beat some of Apple's kernel drivers.
3. If Apple would release a writable NTFS driver with a promise to maintain it, and its quality was high, then I guess you're right.
At this point Apple hasn't even enabled write support by default, so they obviously aren't going to fix any issues that people have with the writable driver.
If it were just a little bit cheaper I might buy a copy. As it stands today, 25 euros is almost 40 dollars, which is more than I am willing to spend for increased NTFS performance.
ReplyDeleteI installed the demo on my Mac running Snow Leopard. I want to test-out the ability to reformat a FAT32 USB flash-drive to be NTFS.
ReplyDeleteThe install seemed to go fine and I can see Tuxera NTFS in the System Preference pane. However, when I open Disk Utility and select Erase Disk, Tuxera NTFS is not appearing as an option for reformatting. Can you help?
Thanks
kevin:
ReplyDeleteIt's a bug affecting Snow Leopard. I have a fix ready, and it will be in the next release. Just be patient. :)
By the way I just tried Tuxera NTFS for Mac 2009.10 under 10.6.1 32bit Kernel mode and it has the exact same bug NTFS-3G 2009.4.4 has using MacFuse 2.0.3,2 or 2.1.5 Beta.
ReplyDeleteFree/Used disk space does not get updated in either the Finder or Path Finder until the volume is unmounted and re-mounted in disk utility.
Anonymous, October 28, 2009 6:40 AM:
ReplyDeleteThis is a known issue with MacFUSE on Snow Leopard, so it's not an NTFS-3G or Tuxera NTFS bug, but a bug affecting all MacFUSE-based filesystems.
Amit Singh, the main MacFUSE developer has been notified about this, and hopefully it will be fixed soon. See the following thread:
http://groups.google.com/group/macfuse/browse_thread/thread/c2747bc1739fda69
if i would pay, i would choose paragon ntfs for mac
ReplyDeleteAnonymous, November 13, 2009 12:33 PM:
ReplyDeleteReally, why is that?
Why that? Heck, because it's the most expensive product, so it's gotta be better! :p
ReplyDeleteHaving used the Paragon NTFS driver for years, both under Linux and OSX, I can know very well how measly its performance is, compared to ntfs-3g. But obviously, some other people know better, even if they have never used the product.
the price of 25€ is quite steep.. compared to the price of the competitor - $19.95 which equals to 13€. quite a difference. esp. considering the opensource background of ntfs-3g.
ReplyDeletei am not happy with the price.
Your suggestions about pricing have been noted and taken into consideration.
ReplyDeleteOf course everyone would want to pay as little as possible, but then again we already have an alternative which is completely free, NTFS-3G.
Tuxera NTFS is a premium product, delivering the best performance combined with reliable operation and safe data handling.
If you think it's not worth the price, then NTFS-3G is probably the choice for you. :)
I just bought Tuxera but now I see that this version is older and less anvanced then the free version ??
ReplyDeletemortench:
ReplyDeleteThat's not true. In what way would Tuxera NTFS be older and less advanced than the open source version?
Please clarify.
Latest free version is 2009.11.14 which is newer than the commercial one at 2009-10-15
ReplyDeleteNB: One of the features that stopped working in the commerical Tuxera NTFS-3G is mouting of pgp volumes formatted with NTFS (worked in the free NTFS-3G).... Is there a fix for it ?
ReplyDeleteI just downloaded and installed the latest NTFS-3G on my Snow leopard machine. I had macfuse installed already. Now, I can't boot. System corupted Will have to reinstall from dvd and time machine I'm afraid. Or can I start with some option key and disable the the KEX? /peter, disappointed
ReplyDeletePeter:
ReplyDeleteYou can start your computer in safe mode, so that only required kexts are loaded. See http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1455 for more info.
Could you just, before you do that, boot your computer in verbose mode and tell me what you see on the screen, so that we can determine why your computer suddently stopped booting properly? I haven't heard of any such situation before (at least not in any of the latest versions).
Since the last OS X update, NTFS-3G doesn't work. So I considered Tuxera, that didn't work either....
ReplyDeleteI like your licensing model, one license per person. I'd pay $25 for a license. But honestly, with a free alternative I think you need to try introductory pricing to gain a following.
Tyler:
ReplyDeleteCould you explain more about your problems?
What was the name of the Mac OS X update that broke your NTFS write capabilities, and what version was previously installed? (i.e. did you go from 10.6.1 to 10.6.2 or from 10.5.x to 10.6...?)
Please uninstall both Tuxera NTFS and MacFUSE using their respective preference panes (see Apple menu->System preferences...) and then reinstall from the disk image. Hopefully that will restore Tuxera NTFS's functionality.
About our licensing model, you have to take into account that buying a license is a once in a lifetime event, as we will never charge for updates... so for such a commitment I don't think the price is unreasonably high.
We're quite satisified with customer response so far.