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LEFTEROS / PERSONAL NOTES

Options to read/write Mac disks from Boot Camp

15 June 2010 / Lefteris Iliadis / SomniusX

Historical text from HellasProject (2009–2014). It is not current advice or a present-day service.

Despite the progress of virtualisation, Boot Camp remains the best choice in compatibility and overall speed when you want to run Windows apps on Mac hardware. That will reasonably always be so, but while speed is in some way a given, the lack of built-in support for NTFS on OS X and HFS on Windows blocks file access to and from both partitions.

There are, however, several utilities that allow two-way file access both on OS X and on Windows.

Windows options

When you boot into the Mac’s Windows partition, or when you connect the Mac via Target Disk mode to a PC with a FireWire port, you can use the following utilities to read and write the HFS+ formatted disk.

  • MacDrive – has been around a while, used and reviewed. Costs $50..
  • Paragon HFS+ – a very reliable utility, costing $40.

OS X options

Unlike Windows, which does not support HFS+, Mac OS X allows reading NTFS disks, but by default you cannot write to them. Moreover, while there is rudimentary NTFS support, it is not enough to write, and some extra or advanced features may not work.

  • SL-NTFS – This freeware utility allows, with its bundled driver, access and writes to NTFS disks. In other words a small system preference pane that talks to OS X’s NTFS driver.

  • Paragon NTFS – A more advanced choice than the driver built into OS X, Paragon’s solution for Mac users to read and write NTFS disks. Costs $40, like the matching utility for Windows.

  • Tuxera NTFS – Like Paragon’s solution, Tuxera has developed its own NTFS driver. Costs $30.

  • NTFS-3G – This is the open-source edition of the Tuxera driver. It is developed in parallel with Tuxera, and includes more advanced features that have not been extensively tested in the Tuxera edition. It is a free download, but be careful to download the open-source version instead of Tuxera, which also has a download link.

Source: MacLife.gr (cnet source), written by igiorgio