Mac OS X does a good job of working with a wide variety of disk formats. It can, for example, read and write USB hard drives formatted using FAT32 which is also compatible with all versions of Microsoft Windows. Any FAT32 formatted hard drive is useable right out of the box by either Microsoft Windows or Mac OS X. The problem is that FAT32 is drives using have relatively slow disk access. And, the maximum file size is 4GB. The 4GB maximum file size becomes a problem if you want to, for example, copy a large file like a VMware or VirtualBox virtual machine hard disk file from a Mac to a PC running Windows. Transferring large video files from a Mac to a PC is another common problem. Microsoft's NTFS partition format is fast and does not have a 4GB maximum file size limit. However, while Mac OS X can read NTFS drive partitions, it cannot write to it. I've gotten around this issue by moving files over the network and other means. But, moving files using an external USB drive is a much simpler and faster means... If Mac OS X could writer to NTFS.
Fortunately, there is a simple and free solution for this issue called...
...which coupled with...
...lets your Mac write to an NTFS formatted hard drive as well as read it (OS X can read NTFS partitions natively).
You need to install MacFUSE before installing NTFS-3G. MacFUSE provides a base for add-on file handlers like NTFS-3G to extend OS X's ability to deal with additional file systems such as NTFS.
Unpacking NTFS-3G reveals both an installation file and an uninstallation utility. The uninstaller can be handy if you later decide that NTFS-3G is not working for you or unnecessary. There's no instruction to reboot the Mac after installing MacFUSE and NTFS-3G. But, the superstitious Windows user in me decided restart my Mac anyway.
I attached an expendable (in case NTFS-3G/MacFUSE was buggy) external NTFS formatted USB hard drive to my Mac and copied two large, but not gigantic, files: A 589.5MB Xubuntu ISO file and a 2.85GB VirtualBox virtual drive for an Xubuntu Guest OS. After the file copying finished, I detached the USB drive from the Mac and plugged it into a PC running Windows Vista. After copying the virtual drive file over to the PC, I fired up VirtualBox under Vista and brought up the transported Xubuntu Guest OS on the PC (VirtualBox required a bit of tweaking and fussing).
The entire installation and test process was painless. The file transport worked fine (write to NTFS partition from a Mac). And, I'm very happy that I can easily copy large files using an NTFS formatted USB drive that Microsoft Windows can work with.
The NTFS-3G December 22, 2008 blog entry notes a couple of known issues for filenames with international characters and the Startup Disk preference pane (neither affected me). So, be sure to read that blog entry before installing NTFS-3G.
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I liked MacFUSE but found it incredibly slow to write to. I copied 45Gb to a USB drive and it took 14 hours. That's not viable. I'm back to using FAT32 on a 160Gb external USB bus-powered drive for transfers. That's good enough for me.
I can confirm the efficacy of MacFUSE and NTFS-3G. I recently had an XP station start to go down and get seriously flakey. Could have been a virus, or typical windows stuff. Either way, after getting a fresh install on a new drive, I had to get my data off of the old drive. However, every time I plugged the old drive into the PC (with a USB chassis) it would hork and blue screen the system (sounds like a virus, eh, but none of the major scanners found anything).
So, I used my mac (and MacFUSE) as the netural territory, copying from the 'corrupted' NTFS drive to yet another fresh NTFS drive. The new NTFS drive was then plugged into the XP machine and the data was restored (wasn't a virus, still unsure what it was).
Keep in mind that occasionally you need to make use of hte "ntfsfix" command line tool. Read the man page on this one, as it is simple enough and it worked every time fixing what XP thought was a "irepairable corrupt drive".
NixerM: I do not use BootCamp (I've been using either Parallels or VMware Fusion to run Windows when needed on my Mac - not often, I must say). I found a year-old discussion related to this on Macworld however: Work around a NTFS-3G/Boot Camp/Startup Disk issue
Bradley: I've been too cheap to spend $39.95 for Paragon's NTFS for Mac OS X. I was aware of it, however. Not sure I even need it now.
Deyner: Thanks for the warnings! Points noted.
Russell: The only way I can think of formatting an NTFS partition using a Mac would be to run Windows in a Guest OS using Parallels/Fusion/VirtualBox and format a USB drive in use by the Windows Guest OS.
@Bradley - the article is about free software, nonetheless you have provided a very useful info. Paragon's solution helps resolve the issue with Russell Tolman.
Todd - have you tried using the NTFS read / write with Boot Camp?
Given that Paragon Software allows formatting to NTFS from on a Mac OS X system, it would be interesting to see how Boot Camp responds to the NTFS format using MacFUSE, NTFS-3G.
Paragon Software's NTFS supports formatting NTFS volumes. see above URL
"newfs_ntfs” utility formats any partition as NTFS under Mac® OS X"
Also in NTFS there are issues with illegal characters such as / which are common in my large DVD Studio Pro/Audio files. Also there are issues with deep folder structures. So keep that in mind while moving files on the NTFS drive.
I have one question. Is there any way to format a usb drive in NTFS from a Mac. I tried Disk Utility; no option for NTFS, tried on a Mac using VM 2.01; no joy there; the option is only for fat 32. I am not a windows expert by any means.
Thanks for the help in advance.