UPD 21.08.2011:
There is even better way to solve the same issue with native Mac OS X
drivers, but it has its own pros and cons. Read at the end for details.
UPD 12.09.2011 (IMPORTANT): Native driver makes NTFS unusable. Read below for details.
Mac OS X Lion (10.7) was released recently, in the end of July 2011.
And many users had started to complain that their NTFS disks stopped
working. And the much worse problem is that “old” solutions do not work
well.
But after one or two weeks of researching of this issue, I’ve managed
to make NTFS work in Mac OS X Lion (10.7). The key here is a proper
combination of software versions.
So I will shortly describe the usual choices for external data
storages, and what problems arises with each of them. And later I will
show how you can get the most universal way — NTFS — to work where it
does not work by default, with links and pictures.
Data Storages
The only reason to worry about this problem is an ability to access
external storage drives. Even if these are your own drives and you can
select a filesystem to use, that choice is not easy.
There are few possible choices for large (~1TB) file storages, but each has very unpleasant limitations and issues:
* HFS+/HFSX (or “Mac OS Extended”/”Mac OS Extended (case sensitive)”)
— okay with big volumes and big files, but works natively under Mac OS X
and Linuxes only. Windows need third-party software, which is either
free file browser/extractor or paid low-level drivers.
* FAT32 work in each and every OS now, but has limitation for file
size up to 4GB (so, you cannot store DVD image, which is usually 4.5+
GB).
* FAT64 (exFAT) is a new solution, but it works natively only in Mac
OS X and Windows 7. Older Windows systems (Vista, XP) require Service
Packs and updates to support exFAT. Linuxes do not support exFAT yet at
all. More on that, it has only one file table, so if this only place
will be corrupted on write, I will get all the data lost.
* NTFS. Okay with big files an bug volumes. Works natively in all
Windows systems. Works fluently in all Linux systems. Has native
read-only support in Mac OS X. But has not write support under Mac OS X.
As you can see, in terms of cross-compativility, NTFS is the best
choice: it works almost everywhere, and with no limitations. The only
issue is write mode in Mac OS X.
Taking into account that you probably have a lot of friends with NTFS
volumes, who can visit you and bring you something interesting there,
you actually have no choice except as try to make NTFS working.
So, let’s do it.
Paid NTFS Solutions
But first, in case you want to make your own research, or you are
looking for a solution that just works out of the box, and you are ready
to pay for it, you can give a try to
Paragon NTFS for Max OS X 9.0 for $19.99 (5-days trial). That is much cheaper than
Tuxera NTFS for Mac for $36.02 (with 15-days trial).
The former one definitely works – I’ve tried it in trial. Just
install and get everything ready: both read and write modes, auto-mount,
and also NTFS formatting in Disk Utility, disk checking, etc.
I haven’t tested the latter one, so you can leave a comment here about your experience with Tuxera paid solution.
Free NTFS Solution
This free solution requires some efforts. Not so much, of course.
Well, if you are going to make your own research, it can be lots of
efforts, since the situation with NTFS-3G is not very clear now.
But if you are just about a ready, copy-n-install solution, it will be easy, and requires only these two or three steps:
* MacFUSE 64-bit.
* NTFS-3G stable.
* “15 seconds” error work-around (optional).
MacFUSE 64-bit
First, you need MacFUSE with 64 bit support. That is the main problem
with Mac OS X Lion — it uses 64-bit kernel, and all previous version of
Mac OS X used 32-bit one. So, old MacFUSE binaries won’t work anymore.
You can get
Tuxera MacFUSE 2.2 image for free (could not find a page with it, just a download links) or try to compile
OSXFUSE from sources. I’ve used the former one.
You can see MacFUSE preferences in “System Preferences”. Well,
actually these are not preferences, but only “update” and “uninstall”
actions, and current version info:
NTFS-3G stable
Second, you will need working copy of NTFS-3G. Long story short,
NTFS-3G is either already dead or is going to die. There is its
ancestor:
Tuxera NTFS for Mac (paid).
But we are going to use old version of NTFS-3G — the one from 2010. I’ve got one
from here. But you can try googling for it, or browse
here for this exact version (not 2011 — I’m not sure they work).
I also tried to install later version from MacPorts, but it does not
work too: mounts something that stills unreadable. That is in addition
to an error in installation process (“mv” does not see the libntfs-3g
file or so).
Now, when you have installed two binary packages, you can restart Mac OS X and try to attach the drive. It should work.
NTFS-3G preferences pane looks populated and interesting:
“15 seconds” error work-around
But it will show you the error message saying that there were not signal in 15 seconds:
This is not a big problem, because everything works fine. Only annoying message box is a problem.
So the third, optional step is to address this issue. You can follow this link:
https://gist.github.com/1100318
(see first and the only comment under the code). You just
download this attached C file, run “gcc” command line from the comment, and replaces
the “fuse_wait” binary as said there. Yes, you will need “gcc” here.
Because of a change in Mac OS X 10.7,
fuse_wait (a tool distributed with NTFS-3G for Mac OS X) displays a "15 seconds" timeout error every time a NTFS volume is mounted.
Download this gist and run the following commands to build and install this unofficial version of
fuse_wait, that fixes the issue. Please note that Xcode has to be installed for this to work.
sudo mv /usr/local/bin/fuse_wait /usr/local/bin/fuse_wait.orig
chmod +x build.sh
./build.sh . /tmp /
NTFS-3G and other filesystems using
fuse_wait should now
mount fine (without the timeout error) and stay mounted. Don't forget
that this is just a workaround. This issue has to be fixed in an updated
version of NTFS-3G.
To revert to the original
fuse_wait, run the following command in Terminal:
sudo mv -f /usr/local/bin/fuse_wait.orig /usr/local/bin/fuse_wait
I hope this helps.
And voila! Now you have working NTFS filesystem for free with no “15 seconds” error message. Profit!
Problems
Nevertheless, Mac OS X is a Unix-based system. And Unix-based system
is a big problem when they work as desktop OS (earlier I thought that on
Linux-based system because of community-driven and crowd-based
development concept). This solution has some problems too. Though they
are not about the solution itself, but about the components used.
The most important problem now is the speed: with this NTFS-3G on
MacBook Air (4GB, i7 CPU) write speed for USB 2.0 drive is about 3.3
MB/s. Just to compare, the same drive in the same port, but with
exFAT/FAT64 partition can write with ~38 MB/s (or fast enough to make
exact estimation; will try larger files later).
Also, immediately following the mount of a drive, there is a line in system log with an error message saying:
8/20/11 6:27:48.394 AM fseventsd: could not open <
