NTFS is a very weird filesystem. It is not fully documented, which means that only Microsoft really understands completely what goes on in this filesystem. However, different programmers have been able to find here and there some information about it, and were also able to reverse engineer some of this file system format.
It is therefore now possible to read this file system from non-Microsoft operating systems. However, since its inner workings are still not entirely understood, writing to this file system is at the experimental stage and actually very dangerous and could screw up more things than it could solve, because the drivers doing this are basically incomplete. Apple, just like most linux distributions, has taken the safe route by allowing read-only access to NTFS, which works fine without disturbing anything.
I see that someone has started a project on SourceForge to develop a NTFS driver for Mac OS X, but it seems to be abandoned because nothing has been released since last year.
Here is my understanding. The whole thing about NTFS is the security. The files, folders, whatever are tied to the person who made the entities in the first place. Along with that are a whole slew of access permissions for anybody who is not the person who made the entities. So just swapping an NTFS HD from one Windows computer to another (with different user accounts, as well). will immediately throw up all sorts of security barriers. By default, anybody has read access, but even that premission can be taken away explicitly. Naturally, there is a way around this and that is to access the HD as an Administrator level account within the Windows environment. Then you can do whatever to give yourself read/write access or grant it to another user. Accessing it from a Mac, otoh, even as a Mac administrator, most likely will not be the same as accessing as a Windows administrator. Unless you are sporting the relevant user ID's to the NTFS client layer of the HD, then you will be barred access, as is by design. That said, perhaps you could find better luck if you had Virtual PC on your Mac and accessed the volume from a Windows administrator account? Don't forget to import or activate the drive from within Windows...
Here is my understanding. The whole thing about NTFS is the security. The files, folders, whatever are tied to the person who made the entities in the first place. Along with that are a whole slew of access permissions for anybody who is not the person who made the entities. So just swapping an NTFS HD from one Windows computer to another (with different user accounts, as well). will immediately throw up all sorts of security barriers. By default, anybody has read access, but even that premission can be taken away explicitly. Naturally, there is a way around this and that is to access the HD as an Administrator level account within the Windows environment. Then you can do whatever to give yourself read/write access or grant it to another user. Accessing it from a Mac, otoh, even as a Mac administrator, most likely will not be the same as accessing as a Windows administrator. Unless you are sporting the relevant user ID's to the NTFS client layer of the HD, then you will be barred access, as is by design.
Typically all non-Windows NTFS readers ignore permissions, because they are irrelevant for other systems than the Windows box/domain they were created on. Correct me if I'm wrong...
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It is therefore now possible to read this file system from non-Microsoft operating systems. However, since its inner workings are still not entirely understood, writing to this file system is at the experimental stage and actually very dangerous and could screw up more things than it could solve, because the drivers doing this are basically incomplete. Apple, just like most linux distributions, has taken the safe route by allowing read-only access to NTFS, which works fine without disturbing anything.
I see that someone has started a project on SourceForge to develop a NTFS driver for Mac OS X, but it seems to be abandoned because nothing has been released since last year.
I formatted it on a WinXP machine.
I guess I'll format it for PC on my machine here.
It was just a mirror backup of what was on my work PC, so...
Originally posted by Randycat99
Here is my understanding. The whole thing about NTFS is the security. The files, folders, whatever are tied to the person who made the entities in the first place. Along with that are a whole slew of access permissions for anybody who is not the person who made the entities. So just swapping an NTFS HD from one Windows computer to another (with different user accounts, as well). will immediately throw up all sorts of security barriers. By default, anybody has read access, but even that premission can be taken away explicitly. Naturally, there is a way around this and that is to access the HD as an Administrator level account within the Windows environment. Then you can do whatever to give yourself read/write access or grant it to another user. Accessing it from a Mac, otoh, even as a Mac administrator, most likely will not be the same as accessing as a Windows administrator. Unless you are sporting the relevant user ID's to the NTFS client layer of the HD, then you will be barred access, as is by design.
Typically all non-Windows NTFS readers ignore permissions, because they are irrelevant for other systems than the Windows box/domain they were created on. Correct me if I'm wrong...