The primary selling point of Paragon's tool is speed and compatibility, when compared to the option behind door number 2: MacFUSE/ ntfs-3g, the Google implementation of the FUSE library for Mac OS X paired with the open-source build of NTFS support (now stable after 12 years of development!).

For $29.95, you get a driver compatible with 10.4.6 and up which works on both PPC and Intel Macs (why version 6 for a new product? It's tracking the version of the Linux utility, also at v6). Paragon has sold a Linux NTFS driver for some time now, but this is the first version of the tool for Mac OS X. Without a separate FAT32 volume or a Windows-side utility like MacDrive, transferring files can be a pain.Įnter the new release from Paragon, NTFS for Mac OS X 6.0, meant to overcome this limitation. PC-to-Mac switchers are sometimes surprised to discover that while Mac OS X has full support for reading, writing and formatting the older FAT32 Windows disk format, media formatted with the NTFS scheme (NT for 'New Technology' a la Windows NT, FS for File System - introduced in 1993, not so 'new' anymore.) mounts as read-only on the Mac.Įven though there are valid technical reasons for keeping the NTFS drives read-only - for one thing, the NTFS format is a Microsoft trade secret and must be licensed for full compatibility - this constraint may cause challenges for cross-platform operations or Boot Camp users who choose NTFS for their drives.

Microsoft ntfs for mac