Tuxera NTFS for Mac Released with 64-bit Support
Tuxera NTFS for Mac Released with 64-bit Support
Revamped Software Interconnects Every Mac With Windows-Formatted Drives
HELSINKI, FINLAND - October 11, 2010 - Tuxera Inc., the leading provider of Windows-compatible file systems for Linux, Android, Mac and other platforms, today announced the release of a major new version of its popular Tuxera NTFS for Mac loaded with full 64-bit support, extended attributes, and other improvements. Apple's latest Mac Pro computers, released in mid-August, are the first to have Snow Leopard operating system installed in 64-bit kernel mode. Tuxera follows Apple's direction with the revamped NTFS file system application that is guaranteed to work with future Macs.
Tuxera NTFS for Mac allows Apple Macintosh users to read and write in Windows-format, safely and quickly. The software has become extremely popular among consumers who migrate from Windows to Mac, and wish to fully use their Windows-formatted hard drives and memory sticks with the new system. Designers running Mac use the software to prepare customer deliveries. Tuxera NTFS for Mac is also widely used in media production companies and universities with heterogeneous computing environments that include both Windows and Mac computers. The software is compatible with popular virtualization and encryption solutions including Parallels Desktop®, VMware Fusion® and TrueCrypt.
“This is a major upgrade for Tuxera NTFS for Mac. We have worked hard to rebuild 'under the hood' functionality to be fully compatible with 64-bit and are pleased with the performance throughput,” stated Mikko Välimäki, Tuxera CEO. "There are also several other improvements ranging from a simpler installation process to new features only available from Tuxera such as full support for extended attributes. We remain fully committed to providing Mac users the best-of-class file system compatibility to the Windows world."
Apple has introduced 64-bit kernel mode in Snow Leopard. 64-bit support speeds up the operating system and removes barriers for maximum physical memory. Tuxera NTFS for Mac now joins other system applications that can take full advantage of the future of high-performance computing.
The new Tuxera NTFS for Mac version 2010.10 can be downloaded from http://www.tuxera.com/products/tuxera-ntfs-for-mac/. An update is free-of-charge to previously registered customers.
For more information, please contact:
Mikko Välimäki
CEO, Tuxera Inc.
+358 (0)50 598 0498
Apple: 64-bit.
About Tuxera. Tuxera is the leading provider of file systems that allow music, pictures, videos and other content to be ported across devices. With Tuxera file systems inside, users experience plug and play interoperability with their laptops, digital cameras, set-top-boxes, mobile phones and other consumer electronics. Building on the success of open source, Tuxera’s industry-standard NTFS and exFAT solutions for Linux, Android, Mac OS X and other platforms have over 30 million installations. Close collaboration with Microsoft ensures reliable compatibility and helps Tuxera to set the standard in high-performance, low power use for embedded and mobile solutions. Tuxera’s customers include leading hardware, software, and consumer electronics companies. For more information, please visit www.tuxera.com.
Release candidate: Tuxera NTFS for Mac 2010.9-RC
The latest release candidate of Tuxera NTFS for Mac is now out.
The new release candidate integrates the shared component MacFUSE closer into the driver to simplify installation and adds support for Mac users running the fully 64-bit Snow Leopard kernel (the 'X86_64' kernel flavor). This means that the newest Mac Pros (mid-2010) will be able to use Tuxera NTFS for Mac without switching to the 32/64-bit hybrid kernel which is the default on all other consumer Macs.
Along with these changes there have been numerous other improvements, for instance:
- Driver now runs in 64-bit mode on Intel 64-bit and PowerPC G5 processors (only Mac OS X 10.5 and later).
- Bugfix for extended attribute handling which caused file copying problems in some cases.
- Disabled the 'archive' flag for directories because of conflict with Finder.
- Fixed incompatibility with TrueCrypt volumes.
- Driver codebase synchronized with NTFS-3G 2010.8.8 (see: NTFS-3G release history for a list of changes).
Feedback from users running the 64-bit kernel is most appreciated. Please post your experiences in the forum, or send an email to our dedicated support email address if you're a customer. Thank you.
Tuxera Celebrates Over 1 Million NTFS for Mac Downloads
Press release
March 16, 2010
Tuxera Celebrates Over 1 Million NTFS for Mac Downloads
The World's First and Fastest NTFS for Mac Solution Defines the Standard
HELSINKI, FINLAND. Tuxera Ltd, the creator of the leading NTFS end exFAT file system drivers, celebrates the fact that its NTFS for Mac technology has exceeded 1 million downloads. Tuxera NTFS for Mac continues to define the gold standard for file system interoperability between Mac and Windows computers. The product has won awards for its extreme performance and flawless operation.
Tuxera leads the NTFS-3G open source project, which made a breakthrough in January 2007 being the first in the world to release NTFS read/write support on Mac OS X. Since then Tuxera has continued to innovate its market-leading technology. The high-performance Tuxera NTFS for Mac remains today as the world's fastest NTFS for Mac solution. Read and write speeds have reached 100MB/s, and in practice the speed is usually limited only by the hardware.
"Make no mistake: we were the first on Mac, and remain the first both in stability and performance. We also do not charge for any performance and feature updates, which we frequently publish during the year. Our license is forever." noted Mikko Välimäki, Tuxera CEO.
Tuxera NTFS for Mac is quickly becoming a must-have for consumers who migrate from Windows to Mac, and wish to fully use their Windows-formatted hard drives and memory sticks from the new system. Tuxera has also sold volume licenses to universities and media production companies, which have mixed Windows and Mac environments with tens or hundreds of computers.
Tuxera NTFS for Mac can be downloaded from http://www.tuxera.com/products/tuxera-ntfs-for-mac/.
For further information:
Mikko Välimäki, CEO
Tel. +358-50-598-0498
email: mikko at tuxera dot com
About Tuxera. Tuxera offers NTFS and exFAT file system software that guarantee plug and play Windows interoperability. Building on the success of open source, Tuxera's industry-standard NTFS solution has over 10 million installations. Tuxera was the first to implement reliable NTFS read/write support on Linux, Mac OS X, and other systems. Tuxera is also the first to offer exFAT for any system based on extensive collaboration with Microsoft including intellectual property and alliance agreements. Tuxera's customers include leading software, semiconductor, and consumer electronics companies. Together we design the future of file system interoperability. See more from http://www.tuxera.com/.
Tuxera NTFS for Mac gets more reviews
Following the latest release, Tuxera NTFS for Mac is receiving positive reviews all over the net. For example movie and television industry veteran David Roth Weiss has in mind a use case where large movie files are post-produced on a Mac and then submitted to clients who have PCs:
Until Tuxera, the 4Gb file size limitation made it impossible to copy files over 4Gb to a FAT32 formatted drive, and NTFS formatted drives could only be read on Macs, writing to them was not possible. ... that could be a real deal breaker for many editors on Macs. Tuxera changes all that, and creates a seamless method for delivering files on hard drives to your PC-based clients.
Earlier also MacObserver picked Tuxera as the NTFS solution for Mac.
As a final note, Softpedia gave us "100% CLEAN" award :)
Release: Tuxera NTFS for Mac 2010.1
The latest release of Tuxera NTFS for Mac is now out!
Note: This release contains an important bugfix for the issue described in KB974729. All users are urged to update as soon as possible.
Changes since 2009.10:
- A fix for the issue described in KB974729, in which NTFS drives were rendered unmountable in Windows Vista and Windows 7 in rare cases after being used extensively with Tuxera NTFS for Mac or NTFS-3G. After this update, Tuxera NTFS for Mac will no longer trigger this condition.
To fix existing drives, please install the hotfix provided by Microsoft and follow instructions.
If you have been affected by this issue and need assistance, don't hesitate to contact our premium support email address (see your activation email). - Performance improvements: Tuxera NTFS for Mac now includes many of the improvements featured in Tuxera NTFS for Embedded systems, designed to further increase performance and reduce unnecessary driver workload, especially when working with many smaller files and traversing large directory hierarchies.
For example, when crawling a test volume recursively, 2010.1 was nearly 40% faster than 2009.10 in our tests. - Performance improvements: The caching layer has been improved with more efficient lookup, which means less CPU overhead, and measures have been taken to minimize the amount of excess data that is read when accessing files in a random fashion.
- Feature: Tuxera NTFS for Mac now includes a new preference pane option "Disable recovery dialog for hibernated volumes", which makes the driver ignore NTFS volumes that contain a hibernated Windows session instead of showing a dialog asking the user whether it wants to purge the hibernated state or abort mounting.
- Bugfix: Fix for some users of Snow Leopard who had problems with formatting NTFS volumes (Tuxera NTFS was not displayed as a formatting option at all times).
- Fix: General usability improvements in the installer and preference pane.
- Fix: Minor fixes to improve compatibility with the built-in NTFS driver.
- Experimental: Tuxera NTFS for Mac now attempts to mount Windows LDM partitions by default. This will not work at all times, but one user did benefit from this change.
Award for Tuxera NTFS Mac
German computer magazine Apfeltalk ("Appletalk") has reviewed Tuxera NTFS for Mac (Google translation). The product was thanked for its unbeatable performance and flawless operation compared to competition. Tuxera NTFS for Mac was recommended with a Silber-Award ("Silver Award"), something we are very proud of!
Tuxera NTFS for Mac Released
Press Release
October 28, 2009
The Fastest Way to Read and Write Windows Disks from Mac is Here
Tuxera NTFS for Mac Released for Immediate Download
HELSINKI, FINLAND: Mac OS X does not support writing to Microsoft Windows formatted NTFS volumes out-of-the box. The fix is here. Tuxera is pleased to announce the immediate availability of Tuxera NTFS for Mac, the fastest way to read and write Windows formatted disks from a Mac. The software has been successfully tested to work with Tiger, Leopard and Snow Leopard.
Tuxera NTFS for Mac is the result of years of intense development in the leading open source NTFS project including hundred of thousands of happy Mac users. Tuxera CTO Szabolcs Szakacsits explains: "Tuxera NTFS for Mac is a major upgrade from our previous open source NTFS-3G for Mac. Performance has been significantly improved along with other enhancements. Copying a DVD to an NTFS hard drive takes now just 45 seconds. With open source it took as much as 12 minutes. We are pretty sure this is the fastest read/write NTFS solution you can have for Mac."
Tuxera CEO Mikko Välimäki adds: "Launching the commercially supported high-perfomance Tuxera NTFS for Mac is an important step for us. We are encouraged by the very positive initial feedback from the vibrant OS X community. Be sure we are not stopping here. Tuxera will make sure its products continue to improve and exceed the highest expectations."
Tuxera NTFS for Mac can be downloaded from http://www.tuxera.com/products/tuxera-ntfs-for-mac/. After installation, Tuxera NTFS becomes visible in your System Preferences. The trial version runs for 15 days after which it must be registered. A license for one user costs 25 euros with volume discount available for enterprise customers. Licenses can be bought with major credit cards from Tuxera's Online Shop: http://www.tuxera.com/buy/online-shop/
For further information:
Mikko Välimäki, CEO
Tel. +358-50-598-0498
email: mikko at tuxera dot com
Szabolcs Szakacsits, CTO
Tel. +358-40-823-3360
email: szaka at tuxera dot com
About Tuxera. Tuxera offers NTFS and exFAT file system drivers that guarantee plug and play Windows interoperability. Building on the success of open source, Tuxera’s industry-standard NTFS driver has over 10 million installations. Tuxera was the first to implement reliable NTFS read/write support on Linux, Mac OS X, and other systems. Tuxera is also the first to offer exFAT for any system based on extensive collaboration with Microsoft including intellectual property and alliance agreements. Tuxera’s customers include leading software, semiconductor, and consumer electronics companies. Together we design the future of file system interoperability. See more from http://www.tuxera.com/
Release: Tuxera NTFS for Mac
We are proud to present the Tuxera NTFS for Mac 2009.10 release!
Changes since version "1.0-RC":
- Preference pane internal classes were renamed to avoid a namespace collision with the NTFS-3G preference pane. If you had both NTFS-3G and Tuxera NTFS installed you could experience some strange behaviour in System Preferences.
- Version number scheme changed to year.month[.revision].
Tuxera NTFS for Mac licenses can be purchased from the Tuxera Online Shop. As a customer, you are entitled to free updates. Your product key will continue to function in updated versions of the driver.
We also have a dedicated customer support email address where you can reach us and get help with the product, or get feedback on any problems that you may have.
Technical briefing
We were asked for a technical write-up regarding the changes that have been made to the NTFS driver for Tuxera NTFS for Mac, so I'm going to make an attempt to describe what we have done.
The most important issue that we identified when studying how to build a commercial grade product from the existing NTFS-3G for Mac OS X product was that performance still wasn't optimal. This has been a problem for NTFS-3G from day one, caused by inefficient kernel/userspace interfaces to the raw disk devices provided by the Mac OS X kernel. Even after applying relevant patches to supply a caching layer between the disk device and the file system driver, we never fully reached the performance level that we would have desired.
Also, the existing caching layer (originally from the FreeBSD port of NTFS-3G) introduced a new problem: written data could stay in memory for long periods of time without being flushed to disk. This means that if the Mac would run out of battery, encounter a system crash, or if someone would disconnect an external drive without unmounting it first, then the latest changes to the data on the NTFS drive would not have reached the disk. The result in this situation is that people would lose the latest data that was written to the NTFS volume. Volume inconsistencies needing to be fixed with 'chkdsk' in Windows would also be very likely.
Essentially with NTFS-3G, people were forced to choose between better performance (caching on) and keeping the data safe in the event of a system crash (caching off).
We eventually decided to write a new caching layer from scratch, partially to be able to experiment with performance and to squeeze the best performance out of the disk, but also to be able to incorporate smart cache flushing to ensure that data doesn't stay in memory longer than it absolutely needs to.
This proved to be very successful. With the new caching layer we have in many cases recorded performance comparable to and in some cases even better than the built in HFS+ driver.
Additional improvements have been made. Some examples:
- Implemented support for the Mac OS X "Locked' and "Hidden" features for files, mapped to their NTFS equivalents (readonly, hidden). This can be used to make files immutable by "locking" them, just like on HFS+ volumes.
- Adaptive file ownership: The files on an NTFS volume always appear to be owned by the user currently accessing it.
- Support for putting files in the 'Trash' bin (in NTFS-3G, you could only delete them directly).
- Some bug fixes that will eventually appear in NTFS-3G as well, for instance: Firefox wouldn't save files on an NTFS volume, International (non-ASCII) volume names led to an error when mounting...
We have also reconstructed the preference pane, added help content, and in many other ways made sure to iron out the small quirks and irregularities encountered in NTFS-3G, to make sure that we deliver a polished, tested and well-functioning product for the commercial market.