Fusion 4 NTFS Passthrough

[CafNetMatt]

I have a Seagate GoFlex 1TB USB external drive.  It's formatted NTFS.

Computer is a Macbook Pro running Fusion 4.1.3.  The Guest OS is Windows 7 32-bit.

When I purchased a Seagate GoFlex Pro 1.5TB drive it came with the Paragon NTFS drivers for OS X which allow read/write.  When I connect the 1TB GoFlex to my Mac, I have read/write access.

Here's the issue.  When I connect the 1TB GoFlex and choose to have it connect to the Windows 7 VM, I get a message stating that it cannot read the drive and it needs to be reformatted.  What it seems to be doing is connecting, disconnecting, reconnecting over and over.  It also seems to be unable to read the filesystem.  I tried it with both GoFlex drives and have the same experience.

As a work around, I connect the GoFlex to the Mac and then add it as a share.  The problem is that I have certain programs that keep dropping connectivity to it.

Since it is hardware passthrough, I wouldn't think it would have an issue with the filesystem.  Am I wrong in my thinking?

Anyone know if there is a workaround besides reformatting the drive to FAT32 or if this is something that will be dealt with in a later version of Fusion?

Thank you for any help.

[ColoradoMarmot]

NTFS drivers have a long history (though some here have different experience) of causing all sorts of random issues.

Do you really need it to be NTFS?

I'll also mention that many pre-built external drives (hitichai are particularly bad - it's in the firmware and you can't fix it) have a hidden partition with vendor installed software on them - that can cause havoc as well.  If I do buy a pre-built one, I always repartition it.  For the ones like Hitachi, where you can't get rid of it, I just return the drive to the store and buy another brand.

[WoodyZ]

NTFS drivers have a long history (though some here have different experience) of causing all sorts of random issues.

I'm one of those users that have use NTFS-3G and or some variant to Read & Write to NTFS Volumes via Linux and Mac OS X and have not had any issues other then slowness compared to Read & Write to NTFS Volumes under Windows OSes.  However I do need to site one caveat and that is I do not leave Write Support enabled all of the time and only enable it at given times that I need to use Write Support and is usually planned to be done directly after booting or mounting the NTFS Volume, do what I need to and then disable Write Support.  Now some might consider that a big caveat however having transferred hundreds of GB in a given session with no issues, then I'm fine with utilizing it as needed/necessary.

BTW I agreed with dlhotka re reformatting HDD when I get them and even though new I still also do a full block level check to ensure there are no bad sectors.

[ColoradoMarmot]

Thanks Woody!

I do the same, and never trust a pre-built external enclosure to sole source data.  Many of them are now soldered into the case (saves a few bucks on a separate controller), and can't be moved when the enclosure fails.