Mount,read,write NTFS on Macs and do the same with HFS on Windows.

The title of this blog is very long, "Mount,read,write NTFS drives on Macs and do the same with HFS drives on Windows."

If you want to share and mount drives between Macs and PCs you can either use FAT32 or exFAT formatted drives.

exFAT works on OSX versions 10.6.8 and higher and is preferred over FAT32 for support of files larger than 4GB. I actually like exFAT because it is the fastest middle-road solution when you take account Linux usage.

For most purposes, exFAT works great. However, there are times you want to have access to the 'other' OS preferred filesystem such as NTFS on Windows and HFS + on OSX.

I have a few large RAID drives that I would like to occasionally see from either side of the fence.

Hence, I decided to fork out the cash and buy commercial drivers from Paragon system to mount, read and write NTFS volumes on Macs and do the same for HFS+ volumes on Windows.

I've tried other products including various free ones but performance was lacking. I was pleasantly surprised with both piece of software from Paragon.

So today, I will do a dual review on both products as a single end-user.

Here is a HFS Plus volume under Windows 7.

A NTFS volume under MacOSX.

HFS + for Windows
http://www.paragon-software.com/home/hfs-windows/
and
NTFS for Mac OSX10
http://www.paragon-software.com/home/ntfs-mac/

Pretty much install and reboot. There is nothing to configure on Windows as I can tell. On the Mac, you have a System Preference pane.

First of all, I did not notice any significant speed handicaps. The drive access seemed as fast as native on both Mac and PC.  I've used other filesystem drivers such as NTFS-3G on Mac, Fuse on Linux and they all seemed very, very slow. Here, it is blazing fast. 7GB files took about a minute to copy and copy reliably.

Benchmarks on both pc and mac seem to indicate no performance penalty but the real test was real-world copies which appeared normal to me.

Both screenshots below are benchmarks of drives that were 60% full with operating systems on them.

USB 3, eSATA and Thunderbolt are both supported. Thunderbolt was not disclosed in their marketing but as you can see from the Windows screenshot above, a Samsung 830 SSD via a Seagate Thunderbolt adapter on a Gigabyte motherboard does indeed work. I was also able to connect a HFS formatted Drobo 5D via USB 3.0. All the USB 3.0 sticks and external drives I have in my possession work on both.

I run 64 bit on both OS so it is safe to say it works otherwise this review would not exist. I am running the latest Mountain Lion 10.8.2 and no problems to report.

Next, I tested them both by making and copying large encrypted Truecrypt container files.  TrueCrypt (for my mac readers) is an encrypted file container like an encrypted DMG that works cross platforms on Windows, Mac, Linux. Think of it as open source, open platform DMG that is encrypted.

I made my truecrypt containers 7GB to see if there was any corruption. I then copied a clone disk image of a fresh Mountain Lion install.  I made the container on my Windows system NTFS drive on the Mac and copied the DMG into the container. I then booted into Windows , mounted and copy the container to various HFS and NTFS drives. I was able to mount and copy, restore the clone image reliably.

It is safe to say, mounting TrueCrypted volumes on either platform works. For example, a HFS truecrypt container created on a mac will mount on the Windows side.


Next, in Windows, you can toggle hidden directories in the explorer. It was very nice. No more ._files or .DS_Store files.

See below. The first image is with the default Explorer view. Clean and tidy. The second image is after I enabled hidden file view in the Explorer preference.

The cons are:
Neither will see software raids created by the opposing OS. For example, I plugged my Thunderbolt LaCie into Windows (which works via Thunderbolt) and I can see the drives in the Device Manager but not the RAID volume.

Neither will see encrypted file systems created by the other.
For example, you can't see a FileVault HFS+ on Windows. To me, this is considered to be a good thing because I keep my work on encrypted volumes.

There are other issues as well. For example, symlinks, permissions, and extended attributes are not preserved on the Windows side when dealing with HFS drives. Certain mac files still use resource forks (which contain extended meta-data) and labels. If you copy them on Windows using HFS+ (copy HFS to HFS), they will not be preserved.

Below is an example. The script folder is highlighted in red label on OSX. Those attributes get stripped when you copy under Windows. Same with the broken link icon on files that have resource forks.

The meta-data, resource forks , symlinks are preserved on the mac side when working with NTFS drives. Meaning, if you copy specials files on OSX onto NTFS drives, you will be fine.
You just can't do that on the Windows side.

Apparently you can set an NTFS as a startup disk on OSX. I did no test this.

This is a minor inconvenience but it is something to know.  It is also disclosed in the manual.
You wont be able to use Windows cloning software to clone a Mac Drive. If you need anything that maintains permissions or meta-data, copy the files in the native operating system. The resource forks and labels are relics from the classic Mac past. I love my colored labels but this is not a show stopper.

Overall, I am pleasantly surprised. Both app drivers are $20 and you have the option of getting multi computer home licenses.

OSX: Automatically Unmount Volumes on Startup Login.

Don't you hate it when you start your mac and you have a bunch of unwanted attached drives mounted on your desktop?

Specifically if you have Windows (via Bootcamp) or rarely used drives you dont want shown or accessible. It gets annoying to see those volumes mounted. For example, I don't want my wife to accidentally delete files off my Windows partition. I also have a clone drive of my system and whenever I double click on an image, Photoshop may launch from the clone drive instead of the one on  my SSD system drive. I rarely use the clone drive except to mirror my working system drive once a week.

I prefer to manually mount those drives when I need them.

Here are the 3 drives I dont like littering my desktop: System Reserved, Windows, and my clone drive. System Reserve is the small boot partition that contains files to boot Windows. Delete any of those files and Windows wont boot.

 Here is my solution I found somewhere off the net (I can't find the original link).  You can write an Applescript  to do this. Create the Applescript to unmount and load at login via the "Login Items" under "User & Groups" in the System Preference.

Here is the applescript. Modify with the volume name and save as an application.

 set volname to "System Reserved" -- # name of target volume  
 set p to (POSIX path of (volname & ":" as alias))'s text 1 thru -2  
 set sh to "diskutil umount " & quoted form of p & " &> /dev/null &"  
 do shell script sh  

Next, with the compiled Applescript(s) applications, go to User & Groups and go under Login Items and add your applescript(s).  Also, I check off "Hide" so I don't see the script executes. It will re-run if you log off into another user and re-login back into your user account. Hiding it will run it in the background so if it errors,you won't see it.

Voila. Next time you boot, those drives wont show up.

You can easily remount the drives at any given time via the Disk Utility so this isn't a permanent thing.

Now, the only thing I can think of next is to stop OSX from prompting you to initialize a disk when it can't recognize the filesystem (e.g. Linux EXT4 or Vmware VMFS).

Handy computer gadgets: 5.25 Bay Tray

Here is a GREAT $11 accessory for your un-used front computer 5.25" bay. It is a blank drawer tray that uses one of the empty DVD bays in your case. You can get it for $11 via amazon (link).

It comes in handy for storing things like DVI-VGA / USB dongles, USB sticks, etc...

Windows and Thunderbolt

I recently got myself a GIGABYTE GA-Z77X-UP5 TH (Ivy Bridge z77 chipset motherboard) along with an i7 -3770k; fully loaded with 32GB RAM and dual SDDs.

As you can see in the photo below, it has two Thunderbolt ports! I will report shortly on how well it performs under Windows with the various Thunderbolt devices I have as I get settled in with the computer.

First of all, as a Hackintosh, Thunderbolt does work with devices plugged in at boot. You can't hotswap after the OS is loaded.Displaylink-HDMI works. I had 4 monitors connected.

Overall, this is a great motherboard. 6 USB 3.0 ports in the back. Motherboard has 3 USB 3 headers so you can add another 6 ports in the front. It has two USB 2.0 ports in the back and many more headers as well. My case adds another 6 USB 2.0 ports. Plenty of SATA. The ESATA is a Marvell chipset and supports 6.0 Gbs SATA III.

I've got 16,000 + Geekbench scores with this board and a 4.0GHZ clocked i7 3770K.

Stay tune as I will report back on how Thunderbolt works under Windows 7.

3rd party lightning iPhone 5 cables

It is safe to say that 3rd party lightning cables do work. This $8 eBay lightning- to-30 pin legacy dock connector works great. Charging and data both works.

Getting CPU info from the command line in OSX

Ever wonder what processor your mac is running and what features it has? Apple usually doesn't disclose the processor model name. Rather, they simply tell you it is a quad core i7 or dual core i5.

For example, does it support VT-d/VT-x? Well, in the command line, you can find out what processor it has and look it up on Intel's ark site.

 For example, if you had an i7 3770k, you could go and get the full specs at by googling "ark 3770k" which gives you a link to the specs at : http://ark.intel.com/products/65523

In linux you can cat /proc/cpuinfo.

Well, I will show you the OSX equivalents. Instead of cpuinfo, we have sysctl To get the model name
in Linux In linux:

 grep "model name" /proc/cpuinfo  

In OSX, it is:

 sysctl -n machdep.cpu.brand_string  

To get full CPU info Linux:

 cat /proc/cpuinfo  

OSX:

 sysctl -a | grep machdep.cpu  

Want to know the core count and threads, you do another pipe grep. In OSX:

 sysctl -a | grep machdep.cpu | grep core_count  
 sysctl -a | grep machdep.cpu | grep thread_count  

Here is a full example:

Target Display Mode on Macs

I've written about Apple hardware has the unique ability to boot off another mac as an external drive. This is called Target Disk Mode and it is a great feature dating back over 10 years. You can read it here on my blog.

However, since late 2009, Apple now lets you use another Mac's monitor, specifically the 27" iMac varieties, as a secondary display. With a cable and a keyboard press, an iMac can be re-used as a second monitor.

This feature is aptly called, Target Display Mode. Apple posts info on it here: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3924

Plug in a Thunderbolt/MiniDisplayPort cable on a macbook and connect to an iMac.
Then press Command-F2 on the iMac. Voila. a Spanning display for Macbook Pros and Macbook Airs.

Now, Apple needs to implement on this on iOS devices. In an earlier blog post, I wrote about using an iPad 3 as a portable Cinema Display Monitor-to-Go using software.

With the new digital Lightning connector on the iPhone and 4th gen iPads, they need to add Mobile Target Display Mode Pronto! 

Imagine it below as it is pictured below (using Air Display). 2048x1536 via Thunderbolt-to-Lightning would kill off any DisplayLink adapters/hacks.