Read/Write NTFS (hard-drive format) on PowerPC

I just found myself in a situation that I never would have thought I’d find myself in.  I’m the kind of Mac user that thinks I don’t need anything from Microsoft (wrong).  I always choose to format my external hard-drives using Mac OS Extended (Journaled) even when I know that it would be “safe” to format on FAT32.  Recently, I was traveling a few weeks ago and I met a good friend of mine that wanted me to share some of my files with him and vice versa.  When I plugged in my hard drive, I could not transfer any of my files because it was locked.  When I realized that his hard drive was formated to NTFS…well I just became sad.  So back I went to http://google.com (like always) and here I found few options that helped me out, that I’d like to share with you.

NTFS 3G – 2010.10.2 (Free) http://macntfs-3g.blogspot.ca/ . Download here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/catacombae/files/NTFS-3G%20for%20Mac%20OS%20X/2010.10.2/ntfs-3g-2010.10.2-macosx.dmg/download 

Tuxera NTFS 2012.3.4 – (Demo $31.00) – http://www.tuxera.com/products/tuxera-ntfs-for-mac/  10.4 / 10.5 – Tiger / Leopard PowerPC.

* MacFuse – 2.0 (Free) – http://code.google.com/p/macfuse/ .  10.4 / 10.5 – Tiger / Leopard PowerPC

* OSXFUSE – 2.5.4 – (Free) – http://osxfuse.github.com/ .  10.5 – Leopard.

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7 comments on “Read/Write NTFS (hard-drive format) on PowerPC

  1. Most machines have Python installed, here’s a handy little tip if you have network access:
    python -m SimpleHTTPServer

    Starts up a HTTP server in the current directory which the other person can use to browse and download your files.

  2. A nice solution if you need both formats, is to format your external hard disk: one partition on Mac OS Extended (Journaled), the other on NTFS. However, certain hard drives have problems when removed from the computer. The NTFS-partition might be slow to be removed, causing problems to show up on the computer next time.
    In my experience it is safer to have both formats on separate hard drives.

  3. Network based solutions like ad-hoc WiFi, ethernet, web server (OS X has Apache built-in) are better nowadays. When you exchange files with that same friend over the web (even when you are in Italy and he is in the US), it works without formatting or installing NTFS drivers, see? :-)

  4. Actually, you haven’t mentioned that all these NTFS standards are totally different from Windows/PC world. I’m not sure about all these programs, but I did use Tuxera NTFS. Still, my friend who uses standard PC/Windows couldn’t read my hard drive, which (specially for him) I formatted into NTFS using this application.

    In my opinion, the best and the quickest solution to exchange files with usage of USB drive/Pendrive between Mac and PC is to:
    - use MS-DOS (FAT) – which in my opinion is nowadays not a suitable solution (for example, you can’t put on it files bigger than 4GB, “goodbye HD movies”)
    - use standard HFS+ partition, and give your friend an app called Paragon NTFS (allows Windows users to read all specific NTFS/HFS partitions).

    Paragon NTFS is also available for your Android devices (needs rooting), so you can actually use your tablet, phone, or smartTV box with HFS+ drives without need for format.

  5. I needed an app like that, since my G4, 10.4.11 would’nt mount a GPS (Mio Moov M410) someone gave me! But since I installed it, yesterday, OnyX and than my «Utilitaire de disques» started to tell me there was a problem with my Volume… Maid the repair… hope it’s just a coincidence!

  6. I have used NTFS 3G for a long time to work with windows drives. Macfuse of course too. I’ve also found, @ powermac4ever, that reformatting NTFS volumes to FAT32 first and then again to Mac OS Extended (Journaled) works the best for removing NTFS volumes.

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