NTFS-3G
Full user review
-
"Works Some of the Time! But it's Free..."
Pros
It's free!
Does work for most tasks and some of the time...Cons
Frequently does not copy all files and reports that one or more files (that are being copied) CANNOT be found.
Slow! This takes forever to accumulate the pool of files you will be coping.
As others have reported,a "delete" is permanent and instant, deleted files DO NOT go to the Recycle Can.
Caused my target drive to go into a recurring mode where I heard clicking. Possibly could have damaged the drive/hard disk had I not switched the power off to the external drive.
If you are transferring a lot of folders and files, this program will not work. You must break down the task into smaller chunks and then it will work fairly well with limitations (see below)Summary
I downloaded this free version of the program and used it on a 2006 Mac Pro (2GHZ Intel Core Duo, 2GB 667 MHZ DDR2 SDRAM) with the 10.5.8 OS, 500GB hard drive. My target disk was a 320GB Maxtor external drive formatted with NTFS and linked to the Mac with a standard USB 2.0 cable.
My task (and the reason I need a program like this) was to copy approximately 80GB of scanned files from the Mac onto a Windows Vista64 desktop computer. Some of the files were larger than t4GB Windows FAT32 limitation. I tediously copied all my files from the Mac onto the Maxtor External. Then, I attempted to transfer all the files in one batch from the Maxtor to the Windows desktop. Nothing! The files would not transfer and there was no message of any kind on the screen. I speculated that it was overloaded and proceeded to go back and transfer one major folder at a time. Bingo! It was working. But, wait! The program stop and showed a window with a message that the operation could not be completed because one or more files could not be found! I clicked OK and the program proceeded to continue coping other files. This did two things: (1) It did not perform the task I wanted! (2) It went on and continued copying, which now cornered me into the tedious task of having to go back and see (manually, file/folder by file/folder) what files it FAILED TO COPY!
But, this isn't the only problem! It also reported for some files that it could not copy some files because the file name was either too long or the file name was illegal! I finally figured out that the files were too long and I tried in vain to truncate them down without success. The files on the external drive that had been copied from the Mac could not be changed because they were "read-only"! I guess (I didn't try) one would have to go back to the Mac and change the file name there, but that means that you would have to change a file name that you wanted but was outside the parameters of the Window's OS's format!!!
I have learned through the years that ANY Windows machine is what I call a "life waster" I can't tell you how many days (hours upon hours) of my life Windows has wasted! Which is why I made it a point some three years ago to go almost exclusively Mac! Why "almost"? Well, I would go 100$ exclusively Mac if I could. As all of us know, not all products/software are offered in Mac version--What a shame!!!