Can OS X read ntfs?

crazyswede · 27 Mar 2008 at 17:36

I have now received my Mac Pro and so far the switch over is going very well.

Need more ram

I have all my old photos and data from my windows machine on a ntfs formated hd. Will I be able to plug it in and transfer the data before I format it in whatever file system apple uses? I got feeling it can't.

bigredshark · 27 Mar 2008 at 17:40

There is third party software to read NTFS, I can't remember the name but it took me all of 5 seconds on google to find it. Works very well for me.

Only downside is most unix NTFS implementations have rubbish performance...

theheyes · 27 Mar 2008 at 17:43

I thought OSX could read NTFS out of the box, just not write to it?

crazyswede · 27 Mar 2008 at 17:47

theheyes said:
I thought OSX could read NTFS out of the box, just not write to it?

That was what I was hoping.

bigredshark · 27 Mar 2008 at 17:52

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=can+os+x+read+NTFS

No, you need a third party utility

theheyes · 27 Mar 2008 at 17:59

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=303572

Second FAQ.

If the partition is 32 GB or smaller, you can use either FAT or NTFS. If it's larger than 32 GB, then you can only format it using NTFS. Mac OS X can read and write FAT volumes, but only read NTFS volumes. Refer to the Microsoft Windows documentation if you are not sure which best suits your needs.

I had Windows Vista Bootcamped with Tiger and could read the files on the Windows partition no problem.

Never done it from an external drive however.

Slogan · 27 Mar 2008 at 18:00

It can read it, just not write to it.

You don't need 3rd party apps for reading.

crazyswede · 27 Mar 2008 at 18:07

Thanks every one

.. I will plug it in when I get home..

Otherwise I would have put it in external case and plugged into laptop and transfered over the network. I did not want to have to buy software one time transfer.

Rambaud · 27 Mar 2008 at 19:45

MacFuse (freeware) driver can allow OS X to write to NTFS partitions.