this post was submitted on 16 Jan 2024
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Macbooks M*: NTFS Drives and Security Parameters (self.apple_enthusiast)
submitted 11 months ago by JackSkellington to c/apple_enthusiast
7 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Hello everyone,

Sorry if this was previously discussed. I searched through the web and could not find a clear solution / conclusion (all too generic).

When I had an intel mac, I was able to use 3rd party apps to read, write and format NTFS drives.

Right now, I cannot do so without disabling security features, since Apple Silicon macs no longer allow the use of kext kernel extensions the same way as before. I checked FUSE stuff but it seems unstable.

Every 3rd party app I tried has the same issue. Isn't there ANY other software, program, etc that allows read/write in NTFS drives without disabling security parameters (on the boot menus)?

If it is not possible, it looks like a shortcoming for those that use more than 1 OS... I have backups in NTFS drives since I also use linux.

Any idea? Kind of bummed with this... I need to export a lot of stuff and FAT* filesystem formats do not meet the requirements as well (due to max file size).

Thank you in advance!!!!!! JS

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I'm a bit confused why you're using NTFS on Linux, as there are a multitude of alternative options on file systems for Linux.

Nevertheless. You could try one of the following:

  1. Try using a virtual Windows environment such als Parallels or VirtualBox or qemu to boot up a Windows installation and copy/edit your files from there.
  2. If the requirement for NTFS is not mission critical, reformat your drives to exFAT, which is very well supported across Linux, Windos, macOS, and iOS/iPadOS. It should meet all your requirements
[–] JackSkellington 4 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

My apologies, I didn’t make it very clear:

  • external drives are NTFS
  • for linux using EXT4
  • basically, NTFS in some external drives because I interact with linux, macos and windows!

For what I recall, exFAT has a limit of 4GB per file correct?

  • edit: I see the limit does not apply to exFAT! Thanks for info!!!
[–] fuckwit_mcbumcrumble 4 points 11 months ago

FAT32 has a file size limit of 4 gigs, exFAT was created to get around those file system limits of FAT32 and be a reasonable file system.

exFAT is my go to for any external drive now that it's actually open and fully supported by Windows, MacOS, and Linux.

[–] TCB13 4 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

I checked FUSE stuff but it seems unstable.

That's what the future is going to look. No more kernel extensions.

If it is not possible, it looks like a shortcoming for those that use more than 1 OS… I have backups in NTFS drives since I also use linux.

Use exFAT filesystems as they don't impose those storage limitations. It behaves well better across systems than NTFS ever did as exFAT was designed to be an open format, support multiple types of storage and get over the size limitations imposed by FAT32.

Because file size references are stored in eight instead of four bytes, the file size limit has increased to 16 exabytes (EB). Therefore, for the typical user, this enables seamless interoperability between Windows and macOS platforms for files in excess of 4 GB.

Enjoy.

[–] JackSkellington 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Thanks for the information and comment!!!! So FUSE will be the way forward with macOS? But it’s not ready in terms of reliability yet correct?

  • Thanks for the info on the exFAT. I was making confusion with the other formats! And I did not know it was better across systems
  • that makes it a solution for some of the disks. Thanks a lot!!!!!
[–] TCB13 2 points 11 months ago

So FUSE will be the way forward with macOS? But it’s not ready in terms of reliability yet correct?

It wont ever be, you can't have the same performance level on a userland filesystem you had with kernel level stuff.

The future is to actually ditch NTFS... FUSE is like a last effort when you need to get something special running not something designed for performance and it sucks in way more ways than that, for instance you got no inotify.

[–] jqubed 1 points 11 months ago

This is probably a bit overkill and not exactly straightforward but you could set up Windows in a virtual machine and go between those. I bought a Windows 11 Pro license on Groupon for $24. Parallels was the more expensive part of the equation, but you can set up file shares between the virtual machine and physical machine, or I think even configure Parallels to just let all files in both systems be accessible to both systems.