Connect my drive to my mac please!

September 26, 2007 2:40 PM

How do I connect my NTFS hard drive to my new mac?

Based on this question, I yanked my old drives and put them in a USB 2.0 enclosure. I can plug them in to my laptop and they mount fine, but when I plug them into my mac, zippo...What did I do wrong?

posted by smithmac_99 to Technology (5 answers total)

Response by poster: Sorry, but i should add that the laptop is a PC.
posted by smithmac_99 at 2:42 PM on September 26, 2007

Did you do anything crazy with it (MacFUSE) or just plug it in?

Open the Disk Utility. Do you see it? It may simply not be mounting. If so, you'll see it show up in the Disk Utility but it won't appear in the Finder. Knowing whether it is detected at all will help.
posted by caution live frogs at 2:48 PM on September 26, 2007

Response by poster: caution live frogs: It shows up in disk utility, but won't mount from there. It says to try running disk first aid...?
posted by smithmac_99 at 3:59 PM on September 26, 2007

I had the same problem. I temporarily put the files on a PC and formatted the drive to FAT32...then put the files back on and voila! Macs had NTFS. Usually they'll detect them though.

I haven't tried this, but apparently it is possible to make them work together
http://lifehacker.com/software/how-to/readwrite-to-ntfs-drives-on-your-mac-270976.php
posted by melissam at 4:45 PM on September 26, 2007

MacFUSE is the way to go, especially with MacFusion, which makes it easier. Instructions for installing both are here. It's quite easy and works very well.
posted by Mo Nickels at 5:31 PM on September 26, 2007 [1 favorite]