Tuxera NTFS for Mac 2009.12-RC

The latest Release Candidate of Tuxera NTFS for Mac, our high performance commercial NTFS driver is now out!

Download Tuxera NTFS for Mac 2009.12-RC

System requirements: A Mac (Intel or PowerPC) running Mac OS X 10.4 - 10.6 (32-bit kernel).

You can purchase a license for Tuxera NTFS for Mac in the Online Shop.

Changelog:

• Performance improvements: Tuxera NTFS for Mac now includes many of the improvements featured in Tuxera NTFS for Embedded systems, designed to further increase performance and reduce unnecessary driver workload, especially when working with many smaller files and traversing large directory hierarchies.
  For example, when crawling a test volume recursively, 2009.12-RC was nearly 40% faster than 2009.10.


• Performance improvements: The caching layer has been improved with more efficient lookup, which means less CPU overhead, and measures have been taken to minimize the amount of excess data that is read when accessing files in a random fashion.


• Feature: Tuxera NTFS for Mac now includes a new preference pane option "Disable recovery dialog for hibernated volumes", which makes the driver ignore NTFS volumes that contain a hibernated Windows session instead of showing a dialog asking the user whether it wants to purge the hibernated state or abort mounting.


• Bugfix: Fix for some users of Snow Leopard who had problems with formatting NTFS volumes (Tuxera NTFS was not displayed as a formatting option at all times).


• Fix: General usability improvements in the installer and preference pane.


• Fix: Minor fixes to improve compatibility with the built-in NTFS driver.


• Experimental: Tuxera NTFS now attempts to mount Windows LDM partitions by default. This will not work at all times, but one user did benefit from this change.

Because of large changes for the codebase, this release is labeled a Release Candidate, and we would appreciate some feedback from users.
Please post your experiences here among the blog comments, or on the Tuxera Support Forum.

NTFS-3G for Mac OS X 2009.11.14

What's new:

• All in the NTFS-3G release notes.


• The 'legacy' build is now definitely dropped.


• The user can now choose at install time whether or not caching should be enabled, with a brief explanation of the benefits and drawbacks of using the ublio caching layer.


• Bugfix: Firefox was unable to save files to an NTFS-3G mounted volume because of missing 'setchgtime' implementation.


• Bugfix: Mounting an NTFS volumes with a non-ASCII volume name led to an error message when mounting (though mounting did complete successfully).


• Bugfix: Formatting internal volumes didn't work because of Mac OS X shell script suid limitations.


• Snow Leopard fix: Uninstalling now works properly.


• Snow Leopard fix: Preference pane now has 64-bit code compiled into it, so that 64-bit Mac users won't have to restart the System Preferences application in order to use NTFS-3G's preference pane.


• Change: The log file has been moved from /var/log/ntfs-3g_util.log to /Library/Logs/ntfs-3g_util.log.


• Many smaller fixes that result from merging the Tuxera NTFS and NTFS-3G brances of several utilities.

The development of this new Mac version was funded by Tuxera Ltd.

Many of you have probably noticed that we have launched a commercially supported counterpart to NTFS-3G this fall, 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:

• NTFS-3G for Mac OS X 2009.11.14
• Source code

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)

Tuxera NTFS for Mac online shop now open

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.

Tuxera NTFS for Mac

Tuxera Ltd. is now announcing the availability of the first release candidate of Tuxera NTFS for Mac, our commercial NTFS offering for Mac OS X. The release candidate can be used in 'trial' mode for 15 days. During these 15 days you can decide whether or not to purchase the product from our online shop.

When you have purchased a license, you will get a product key sent to you via email. You can then use the product key to activate the already installed copy of Tuxera NTFS (you can also choose to activate your license at install time).

Download Tuxera NTFS for Mac (Release Candidate)
Release announcement
Online shop (for purchasing a Tuxera NTFS for Mac license)

System requirements: A Mac (Intel or PowerPC) running Mac OS X 10.4 - 10.6 (32-bit kernel).

Tuxera NTFS for Mac builds upon NTFS-3G to deliver a stable, high performance NTFS driver for Mac OS X. The main focus for development has been to improve performance and at the same time minimize the risk of data corruption, even in situations such as system crashes and accidential disconnection of hard drives without proper unmounting. We have also made sure to add a few more features, such as support for the Mac OS X 'locked' and 'hidden' attributes, support for putting files in the 'Trash' bin instead of just deleting them, etc.

We need people to test this release candidate before putting it in 'release' mode, so any help would be appreciated.

The first 3 people to find a serious bug will be rewarded with a Tuxera NTFS for Mac license. This does not include the following bugs, which are known:

1. Tuxera NTFS installer displays an error message after installing on systems with MacFUSE > 2.0.3 installed. (This is a MacFUSE bug.)
2. Switching between NTFS-3G and Tuxera NTFS preference panes within the same System Preferences session leads to bad interactions and confusing error messages. (This will be fixed in the non-RC release version.)

NTFS-3G 2009.4.4

What's new:

• All in the official release notes.


• Simplified install procedure: NTFS-3G now installs MacFUSE (2.0.2/2.0.3) with it, so that users don't have to download two different packages to get read/write NTFS support working.


• New preference pane version, 0.9.8: The user can now choose to always mount (recover) uncleanly unmounted volumes without user confirmation. (Some minor bugfixes also included.)


• The NTFS-3G system preferences are now retained between installs, and limited support for automatically repairing damaged NTFS-3G settings has been added.


• When asking for confirmation before mounting a volume with an unclean log file or a hibernated volume, the dialog informing the user that the mount succeeded has been removed.


• The 'stable' and 'ublio' labels are dropped. We now have a 'standard' build, and a 'legacy' build in case anyone is still interested in the limited feature set of the old 'stable' build. The 'legacy' build will probably be removed in the future, unless anyone has a good reason that it should be kept maintained.

Download:

• NTFS-3G 2009.4.4
• NTFS-3G 2009.4.4 (legacy build)
      Certain patches such as the caching layer are omitted in this build.

System requirements:

• Mac OS X 10.4/10.5, running on an Intel or PowerPC computer.

The package has been tested with Mac OS X 10.4.11/Intel and Mac OS X 10.5.6/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, write a forum post about it in the NTFS-3G Forum (or post a question as a blog comment if you're just unsure of how things work).

Packaging, patching, Mac OS X-related development and testing is done in the context of my development efforts with the Catacombae projects.

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)

Sources:
ntfs-3g 2009.4.4 (patched)
ntfsprogs 1.13.1
NTFS-3G prefpane 0.9.8
fuse_wait.c
ntfs-3g_daemon.c
ntfs-3g_confirm_mount.c

NTFS-3G 2009.2.1 Update 1

What's new:

• All in the official release notes.


• A dialog now exists for when the user tries to mount uncleanly unmounted or hibernated volumes, allowing the user to choose to force a mount without resorting to using the Terminal.
  [screenshot 1] [screenshot 2]


• ntfs-3g now locks (advisory) the device that it mounts with flock to decrease the probability of two processes concurrently trying to mount it.


• NTFS-3G.prefPane is now at version 0.9.7. (No big changes)


• [Update 1] Bugfix: Unmounting ejectable NTFS drives through Finder failed because Mac OS X claimed they were still in use.


• [Update 1] Improvement: When locking devices, the corresponding alternate device is now also locked (i.e. when a /dev/disk device is mounted and locked, its /dev/rdisk device is locked as well, and vice versa).


• [Update 1] ublio build: Performance tuning should boost performance for most users. Feedback is much appreciated.

Download:

• NTFS-3G 2009.2.1 Update 1 [ublio]
      Performance improved build using internal caching
• NTFS-3G 2009.2.1 Update 1 [stable]
      Slower, but minimizes corruption in the event of a system crash

System requirements:

• Mac OS X 10.4/10.5, running on an Intel or PowerPC computer.
• MacFUSE 2.0.2/2.0.3 or later installed.

The package has been tested with Mac OS X 10.4.11/Intel and Mac OS X 10.5.6/Intel.

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, write a post about it in the NTFS-3G Forum (or post a question as a blog comment if you're just unsure of how things work).

Packaging, patching, Mac OS X-related development and testing is done in the context of my development efforts with the Catacombae projects.

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)

Sources:
ntfs-3g 2009.2.1 (patched, update 1)
ntfsprogs 1.13.1
NTFS-3G prefpane 0.9.7
fuse_wait.c
ntfs-3g_daemon.c
ntfs-3g_confirm_mount.c

NTFS-3G 2009.2.1

What's new:

• All in the official release notes.


• A dialog now exists for when the user tries to mount uncleanly unmounted or hibernated volumes, allowing the user to choose to force a mount without resorting to using the Terminal.


• ntfs-3g now locks (advisory) the device that it mounts with flock to decrease the probability of two processes concurrently trying to mount it.


• NTFS-3G.prefPane is now at version 0.9.7. (No big changes)

Download:

• NTFS-3G 2009.2.1 [ublio]
      High performance build using internal caching
• NTFS-3G 2009.2.1 [stable]
      Slower, but minimizes corruption in the event of a system crash

System requirements:

• Mac OS X 10.4/10.5, running on an Intel or PowerPC computer.
• MacFUSE 2.0.2/2.0.3 or later installed.

The package has been tested with Mac OS X 10.4.11/Intel and Mac OS X 10.5.6/Intel.

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, write a post about it in the NTFS-3G Forum (or post a question as a blog comment if you're just unsure of how things work).

Packaging, patching, Mac OS X-related development and testing is done in the context of my development efforts with the Catacombae projects.

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)

Sources:
ntfs-3g 2009.2.1 (patched)
ntfsprogs 1.13.1
NTFS-3G prefpane 0.9.7
fuse_wait.c
ntfs-3g_daemon.c
ntfs-3g_confirm_mount.c

NTFS-3G 2009.1.1 Update 1

What's new:

• All in the official release notes.


• An NTFS-3G preference pane has been added after some time in development. The preference pane can be used to set NTFS-3G options and uninstall NTFS-3G. Open your System Preferences application after installation to try it out.
  [screenshot]


• Filename normalization code has been added to increase compatibility with Windows filenames including western/greek filenames with accents, and korean filenames.
  Normalization is enabled by default, but can be switched off using the preference pane.
  Note that using normalization may render the accented/korean filenames that you have previously created using Mac OS X / NTFS-3G inaccessible, so please test which mode works best for your particular drive.


• The driver now supports returning and setting the create date for a file/directory. (This has been integrated in the main ntfs-3g source tree.)


• All file names returned that break the 255 byte limit are now truncated to 255 bytes to avoid breaking a directory listing.


• Update 1: Fix for an issue with certain applications being unable to save files to the NTFS-3G volume. This was caused by not having a setbkuptime implementation. Fixed by creating a setbkuptime stub pretending to set the backup time (there is no such thing as backup time in NTFS).

Download:

• NTFS-3G 2009.1.1 Update 1 [ublio]
      High performance build using internal caching
• NTFS-3G 2009.1.1 Update 1 [stable]
      Slower, but minimizes corruption in the event of a system crash

System requirements:

• Mac OS X 10.4/10.5, running on an Intel or PowerPC computer.
• MacFUSE 2.0.2/2.0.3 or later installed.

The package has been tested with Mac OS X 10.4.11/Intel and Mac OS X 10.5.6/Intel.

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, write a post about it in the NTFS-3G Forum (or post a question as a blog comment if you're just unsure of how things work).

Packaging, patching, Mac OS X-related development and testing is done in the context of my development efforts with the Catacombae projects.

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)

Sources:
ntfs-3g 2009.1.1 Update 1 (patched)
ntfsprogs 1.13.1
NTFS-3G prefpane 0.9.6
fuse_wait.c
ntfs-3g_daemon.c

NTFS-3G 2009.1.1

What's new:

• All in the official release notes.


• An NTFS-3G preference pane has been added after some time in development. The preference pane can be used to set NTFS-3G options and uninstall NTFS-3G. Open your System Preferences application after installation to try it out.


• Filename normalization code has been added to increase compatibility with Windows filenames including western filenames with accents, and korean filenames.
  Normalization is enabled by default, but can be switched off using the preference pane.
  Note that using normalization may render the filenames that you have previously created using Mac OS X / NTFS-3G inaccessible, so please test which mode works best for your particular drive.


• The driver now supports returning the create date for a file/directory. (This has been integrated in the main ntfs-3g source tree.)


• All file names returned that break the 255 byte limit are now truncated to 255 bytes to avoid breaking a directory listing.

Download NTFS-3G 2009.1.1 [ublio] (performance patches applied)
Download NTFS-3G 2009.1.1 [stable]

Packaging, patching, some OS X-related development and testing is done in the context of my development efforts with the Catacombae projects.

Requirements: Mac OS X 10.4/10.5, a PowerPC or Intel computer, MacFUSE 2.0.2/2.0.3 or later installed.
This package has been tested with Mac OS X 10.4.11/Intel and Mac OS X 10.5.6/Intel.

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, write a post about it in the NTFS-3G Forum (or post a 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. I don't have a solution for this, but you can still choose your startup drive by:
  • 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)
  If you have any information on a pretty way of solving this issue, I'd love to hear about it.

Sources:
ntfs-3g 2009.1.1 (patched)
ntfsprogs 1.13.1
NTFS-3G prefpane 0.9.6
fuse_wait.c
ntfs-3g_daemon.c