Question on MACs

I am a diehard PC guy, never used or even thought about using a MAC in my life... Well I am currently deployed and my wife knows absolutely nothing about computers. Recently both our Dell laptop and Dell desktop have both crashed. From troubleshooting with her over the phone, I have determined it is the motherboard ont he desktop and an unknown issue on the laptop, both out of warranty.

I have been looking into MACs for her but the problem is we have a 2 TB hard drive on our Desktop that stores our ITunes movies/shows/music. It is formatted with NTFS, how would I get that to be shown on a MAC? I ordered an external USB case for her, and she has it in the case, but I am unsure if we buy a MAC that it would even be able to read the hard drive. Any help you all can offer would be greatly appreciated as this concern is the only thing stopping me from buying a MAC.

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tiersten

The current version of OSX (10.6 - Snow Leopard) has NTFS read support which works fine. NTFS write support isn't enabled by default and can be flakey if you do enable it i.e. corrupts your data. Enable it at your own risk. Your wife would need to enable write support via the commandline as well.

You can get third party NTFS drivers for OSX which allegedly work better but you need to do some work to get them installed and working. If your wife knows nothing about computers then this isn't going to be a good route.

broc

tiersten wrote: »

The current version of OSX (10.6 - Snow Leopard) has NTFS read support which works fine. NTFS write support isn't enabled by default and can be flakey if you do enable it i.e. corrupts your data. Enable it at your own risk. Your wife would need to enable write support via the commandline as well.

You can get third party NTFS drivers for OSX which allegedly work better but you need to do some work to get them installed and working. If your wife knows nothing about computers then this isn't going to be a good route.

Actually, you can install Paragon NTFS on Leopard to enable that and it works very well now. I have to agree it was (very) flakey in the past but I have been using the latest version on 10.6 for months now on 3 computers and haven't experienced a single problem. The install is also very straight forward even for a novice user.

tiersten

broc wrote: »

Actually, you can install Paragon NTFS on Leopard to enable that and it works very well now.

That would come under third party :P

broc wrote: »

I have to agree it was (very) flakey in the past but I have been using the latest version on 10.6 for months now on 3 computers and haven't experienced a single problem.

I mean that the built in NTFS write support in 10.6 is flakey.

It really depends on how much WilliamK99's wife can do with guidance and whether WilliamK99 wants to start supporting something he's never used before and won't have direct experience with.

demonfurbie

some times you can put the drive in a nas enclosure and it can read/wright to ntfs over tcp/ip instead of using 3rd party or flaky software

also there i the bonus of having a nas at home

something like

Ineo I-NA316N1-R NAS Enclosure - 3.5 SATA to USB 2.0, LAN at TigerDirect.com

just make sure the nas os can use ntfs drives

WilliamK99

I am going to go ahead and take the risk and have her purchase an Imac, from what I have been reading about it, it is very user friendly and she should be able to get it up and running, plus a couple of her friends at home have Mac's so they should be able to assist if needed. Thanks for the advice, I may come here with more questions eventually.