NTFS reading and writing.

Darksaga87

Hi, Hope someone can help me with this.

I got my macbook yesterday and im trying to use my Iomega screenplay with it.
Till now ive always used it with windows. But the Mac wont read NTFS which is a windows format. Ive tried downloading NTFS - 3G, but i keep getting an error message about it being unmounted or something. Im Not sure about this.
Ive searched for fixes for this but have come up mostly empty.

Has anyone else encountered this issue?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks guys.

ZENER

Mac OS X does indeed read NTFS. Not sure about Lion but up to Snow Leopard writing to such volumes hasn't been possible. Seems you may have other issues stopping the disk being read. What does disc utility say about the drive ?

Ken

Explosive_Cornflake

Mount it up on windows or linux and see if needs a disk check or something.

john__long

Try this!

http://code.google.com/p/macfuse/

I believe it allows you to read and write.

Darksaga87

ZENER wrote: »

Mac OS X does indeed read NTFS. Not sure about Lion but up to Snow Leopard writing to such volumes hasn't been possible. Seems you may have other issues stopping the disk being read. What does disc utility say about the drive ?

Ken

Explosive_Cornflake wrote: »

Mount it up on windows or linux and see if needs a disk check or something.

Mounted the hard drive using windows, all is looking well.

john__long wrote: »

Try this!

http://code.google.com/p/macfuse/

I believe it allows you to read and write.

There is mac fuse on the mac, not sure if it has all the 'drivers' capability to read NTFS, is there a link to download?

I downloaded a free trial of 'Paragon'. This works, but I dont want to be paying for a program i dont need.

ZENER

Does the drive show up on the desktop ? If so select the drive, right-click on it and 'Get Info'. What does it say about the drive ? Alternatively open Disk Utility and check what it reports about the drive.

Assuming the disk shows on the desktop what happens when you try to open it ? What error do you get ?

Ken

DjFlin

Get hold of a Windows PC, and convert the HDD to fat32

ZENER

Just had a quick look around and it would seem this is a major issue for most people who are using the new Lion OS ! I found this thread on the apple forums - https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3191198?start=0&tstart=0

Half way down the first page there is a suggestion for a temporary fix until Apple get their finger out !!

As for converting to fat32, any files over 2gb will cause problems as that is the largest file size on fat32. It can also be quite time consuming where there are a lot of files.

Ken

Darksaga87

I'm using a trial version of paragon at the mo. so its working for the next couple of days.

When I plug it in, it has 2 partitions. only 1 shows up on the desktop. its the Update_img.
This is MS-DOS FAT 32.

The other part, which is the part I use, is the TB which holds all my photos, movies etc.
this is NTFS, and until I got the paragon trial, did not show up.

Im not running OS lion. still on Leopard.

smtdos

I'm running OSX Lion with Macfuse + NTFS-3g.

No problems reading and writing to NTFS drives.

Inspector Gadget

NTFS-3G is good, but it does seem to require a noticeable CPU overhead (no surprise in a way, I guess) and it also has a dislike for drives that were not cleanly unmounted/ejected... the warnings it issues make it look like the drive is damaged somehow.

Also, unless there's a new version I'm not aware of, there's no Trash/Recycle Bin support. Files deleted off NTFS volumes are deleted immediately, at least on my setup (Macbook / Snow Leopard / NFTS-3G 0.9.8).

cython

ZENER wrote: »

Just had a quick look around and it would seem this is a major issue for most people who are using the new Lion OS ! I found this thread on the apple forums - https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3191198?start=0&tstart=0

Half way down the first page there is a suggestion for a temporary fix until Apple get their finger out !!

As for converting to fat32, any files over 2gb will cause problems as that is the largest file size on fat32. It can also be quite time consuming where there are a lot of files.

Ken

4GB, actually. Still an issue, but that factor of 2 may make or break some people's decision

DominoDub

Point of note:

Even if you get your Iomega screenplay working to NTFS via usb ...you will then run into another problem trying to access it over your wifi network:o
The reason is that the version of SMB has changed in OS X Lion and nearly all of the Iomega Screenplay products will not work at the moment.

I have an older Iomega Screenplay Pro HD ...and can't now connect to it via a new Mac Mini (Lion). Iomega say they are working on a fix ..but I fear they may view some older Screenplay units as legacy products.

I do have a MacBook Pro running (Snow L) working fine on wifi to the Screenplay unit connected to my router .( I have it formated FAT32 - I backed up its content on another drive and rebulit the Iomega).

A good wiki page for Iomega Screenplay pro HD
http://screenplayprohd.wikia.com/wiki/ScreenPlay_Pro_HD

ZENER

cython wrote: »

4GB, actually. Still an issue, but that factor of 2 may make or break some people's decision

My bad

Ken

spannerotoole

You say it works on a windows box. Have you considered sharing the drive on it and accessing it through the mac using filezilla? This would work

Darksaga87

I dont know what it is with the iomega screenplay hard drives, but i couldnt get the mac to read it, in the end i downloaded paragon off torrents and I have that running now. Works grand.