Does anyone know an easy way to mount an NTFS (NT File System) external backup drive R/W on OSX?

I use one backup drive for both my XP and OSX files via a USB interface.

On XP it mounts R/W.

On OSX it mounts Read Only :-(

I'm growing weary of using flash drives and burning CDs to transfer files to the disk. Anyone have this problem solved easily?

Mount the backup drive only on the Windows box.

Share it.

Mount it remotely through the windows box to do the writes.

For restoration, you can see mount the NTFS readonly.

NTFS is a Microsoft file system, they are not known for being "open", many operating systems only support readonly NTFS volumes.

Alternatively, format the volume FAT32. The simplest format possible should be used for backups, you don't know what situation or machine you are going to have to use to recover them.

Hi porter,

Thanks for the quick reply.

I considered the "shared XP" solution, but would like to find a native OS X solution.

Perhaps the only two common filesystems between XP and X are iso9660 and FAT32!

If the drive is FAT32 you can still store all the data as PAX, CPIO or TAR to maintain the attributes, there are plenty of options for reading those formats on XP.

Fortunately we are talking backup and not sharing?

Hi Porter,

Yes, you are right.

I did some google'n and it seems that FAT32 is the way to go, since the OSX is supported. Now I recall the same results when I was bothered by this a few months ago, and came to a similar conclusion.

There is no easy way to convert from NTFS to FAT32, so I think I'll just have to format another drive as FAT32 and transfer all the files from the NTFS disk.

There are some "hacks" to mount NTFS R/W on the Mac, but when I download and installed I don't remember it working.