Mac OS X with Windows NTFS USB2/Firewire Drive READ ONLY

To much to my dismay, I have just discovered that if you connect a Windows NTFS formatted external hard-drive via USB-2 or FireWire, you can only READ the file but it does not allow Writing it and here is the technical article.

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=75320

On a related scheme of things, the Mac OS X "Connect To Server" in the Finder allows you to connect to an FTP server to get the file, but again, it does not allow you to write to the FTP server (this is not a feature in the Windows IE nor Expolrer either), but it is something you should be aware of. If you need to write file via FTP on your Mac OS X system, you'd be best off with Fetch software. I like it because it support the Automator.

Update on this issue: 17 October 2006

I have tried a bit more at it. I thought that we could convert the format from NTSF to FAT32 non-destructively. Apparently this is not easy to do without buying some commercial tool.

There is something called NTSF for Mac on Source Forge http://sourceforge.net/projects/ntfsosx/ But I have not given it a shot yet. The Forum there says there are some known bugs...