USB HD permissions?

D

Dillusion

Supreme [H]ardness
Joined
Oct 21, 2003
Messages
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I am just getting around to using my new imac G4 i recently grabbed. I moved my external hard drive from my HTPC to this mac, but when its connected to the mac I cant edit anything...

When i try to drag folders or files onto the HD, it says i dont have sufficient permissions to do so. When i go to properties of the HD onthe mac, it says ionly have read-only permissions.

The HD is NTFS and a SATA 320GB WD drive.
 
OSX does not natively support writing to NTFS formatted partitions. NTFS partitions are mounted as read only in OSX, your best bet would be to format the external drive with FAT32 which both OSX and Windows support. Just make sure you format the partition in OSX as Windows will only allow you to format a FAT32 partition up to 32gigs.
 
carp3n0ct3m said:
Good to know. But how reliable is this driver?
Click to expand...

NTFS-3G is the driver linux platforms have been using for years, and now it's available in OS X through Mac-Fuse (by Google); and recently hit a huge milestone: 1.0!

So; I've had this installed since it hit 1.0 and was deemed production stable and have had no issues. I used a different set of instructions that didn't use Fink, but now with Fink it's easier to manage; so this way would be better.

The downside the NTFS-3G is that you cannot write compressed files to the NTFS drive; like rar/zip/etc.. so be careful there.
 
Optional87 said:
The downside the NTFS-3G is that you cannot write compressed files to the NTFS drive; like rar/zip/etc.. so be careful there.
Click to expand...

What? Do you mean compressed files like .zip and .rar or do you mean the NTFS "compress files" setting?

compress6.jpg
 
sap said:
What? Do you mean compressed files like .zip and .rar or do you mean the NTFS "compress files" setting?

compress6.jpg
Click to expand...

Both unless I'm mistaken; but that's what I've ready.
 
Optional87 said:
Both unless I'm mistaken; but that's what I've ready.
Click to expand...

Uh, I've written plenty of archived files (zip, rar, etc) to mine. It's just that filesystem compression doesn't work, but most people don't use that anyway.
 
CEpeep said:
Uh, I've written plenty of archived files (zip, rar, etc) to mine. It's just that filesystem compression doesn't work, but most people don't use that anyway.
Click to expand...

Fair enough, I was under the impression it was compressed files/folders too; well either way I didn't have any of those files to move anyway...
 
This did not work for me. My mac cannot find the file ntfs-3g inside the /sw/bin/ folder. EIther it didnt install with the two programs or im doing something wrong?

halp
 
Dillusion said:
This did not work for me. My mac cannot find the file ntfs-3g inside the /sw/bin/ folder. EIther it didnt install with the two programs or im doing something wrong?

halp
Click to expand...

Did you install it through Fink? If so, try just using the DMGs. It's way easier and there's no configuration to worry about. Everything is done automatically for you.
 
carp3n0ct3m said:
OSX does not natively support writing to NTFS formatted partitions. NTFS partitions are mounted as read only in OSX, your best bet would be to format the external drive with FAT32 which both OSX and Windows support. Just make sure you format the partition in OSX as Windows will only allow you to format a FAT32 partition up to 32gigs.
Click to expand...

Not true, I was able to use a boot disk Linux distro and format the drive to FAT32. Then go through Window 98SE and format my external as a full 55GB (I left a 5GB swap partition on it).
 
But I have had so many problems with FAt32 in the past that I don't use it anymore. It's very prone to corruption.
 
I still cant write to the drive, there is NO ntfs-3g package on the computer at all! I cant download it from the fink website, but its on there. I selfupdated and also updated all tables and binaries.
 
I need more help guys...

I cant install the ntfs-3g driver worth a shit. FINK does not locate it, find it, or download it. I have unstable packages in fink checked and it still wont download the ntfs-3g files.

ive tried installing ntfs-3g manually through the .dmg file and it says I dont have macFUSE installed when i do, and the latest version.
 
Dillusion said:
ive tried installing ntfs-3g manually through the .dmg file and it says I dont have macFUSE installed when i do, and the latest version.
Click to expand...

That's a known issue. You can edit the plist file in the package to disable the MacFUSE prerequisite. Why did you try to use Fink for it in the first place? Setting up Fink solely for NTFS-3g is inefficient and needlessly complicated.
 
This might help: http://code.google.com/p/macfuse/
I didn't have any permission problems after uninstalling/reinstalling it properly. The only problem is, the transfer rate is stuck at 1mb/sec. Yes, it takes close to 3 hours to move 10 gigs of data. Yes, it sucks, but it's NTFS on OSX, until Apple decides to adopt it.
 
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