NTFS drive under OSX Lion

[KeiCar]

I just installed a secondary HD in my MBP (I removed the DVD drive) and it works fine. The drive came from another computer and I forgot to format it (its now NTFS) and since macs now car read and write NTFS I didn't recognize it. Well I just got done copying about 700GB of content onto it when I realized its format.

As it stands now the drive doesn't seem any slower then the prior one but I just have this gut feeling that it would be even faster if using a native mac format (like HFS) instead. Should I go and format it now or just keep it as is?

[O_G]

I wouldn't worry about it.

[AudiVW guy]

I just installed a secondary HD in my MBP (I removed the DVD drive) and it works fine. The drive came from another computer and I forgot to format it (its now NTFS) and since macs now car read and write NTFS I didn't recognize it. Well I just got done copying about 700GB of content onto it when I realized its format.

As it stands now the drive doesn't seem any slower then the prior one but I just have this gut feeling that it would be even faster if using a native mac format (like HFS) instead. Should I go and format it now or just keep it as is?

I would back up and reformat it properly to mac, in some rare cases PC drives would corrupt data, if you had to repair it - it would be more complicated - since your tools are mac native..
for your own piece of mind do it right the first time.

Yes, writing to NTFS is slower than HFS+. If you're only making a backup of your internal hard drive and don't need that backup to be natively read by Windows, use HFS+. [ you be glad you did in the long run - since hfs+ support disk permissions better. ]

http://guides.macrumors.com/Drives_and_Filesystems

[KeiCar]

Thanks guys for the responses, but about 5 min after posting this I said F it, I might as well get this over with and started the process of copying everything on the drive to an external drive and by the time I get home it will be done. Format and start copying ALL over again, but once its done, its done.

And this drive isn't a backup of the main drive, but since you mention that, and since I have more space now, I think I'll do that.

Just if you were wondering, the laptop, a current gen 13" mbook pro, had the optical dvd drive removed and I put a Samsung SSD (I went for speed over capacity, so 128GB) in to replace the stock HDD and then put the stock drive where the optical one went. Well that was only 320GB and 5400RPM so it was kinda slow (comparatively speaking) and getting really crowded, so I went and got a 750GB 7200RPM drive to replace it with. I love this laptop!

[O_G]

I would back up and reformat it properly to mac, in some rare cases PC drives would corrupt data, if you had to repair it - it would be more complicated - since your tools are mac native..
for your own piece of mind do it right the first time.

Yes, writing to NTFS is slower than HFS+. If you're only making a backup of your internal hard drive and don't need that backup to be natively read by Windows, use HFS+. [ you be glad you did in the long run - since hfs+ support disk permissions better. ]

http://guides.macrumors.com/Drives_and_Filesystems

That page is outdated. It was last updated in 2008.

NTFS should be just fine for additional drives in Lion.

As for disk permissions, that's basically irrelevant since it's not the boot drive.

[AudiVW guy]

That page is outdated. It was last updated in 2008.

NTFS should be just fine for additional drives in Lion.

As for disk permissions, that's basically irrelevant since it's not the boot drive.

but my answer is still why? do it right the first time.. in the long run you'll be happier..
Sorry but Lion has its share of issues and you do not want to add NTFS to the mix.