What does NTFS stand for? Maybe ‘Not This Friggin System’ Why should it matter what it stands for? All that matters to users is what it does? It allows your computer to have hard drive volumes larger than 32 gig and files larger than 4 gig. Those are the FAT-32 limitations. Guess maybe FAT-32 is not so fat after all.

If you are still using a commodore 64 or a vic-20, you may not even know what a giglebyte is, or care. Why should you? But if you are trying to store and move large video files, you need hard drive volumes larger than 32 gig capable of handling and storing files larger than 4 gig. This is where NTFS becomes necessary in the PC world. NTFS will handle our 14 to 20 gig video files

The video capture card in our PC regularly records up to 12 hours of programs at a time. When recording a program, it is easier to just turn on record ahead of time and not have to worry with a start/stop timer and time accuracy. We edit out commercials later anyway and we can edit out unwanted programming at the same time. (No, we don’t have a TIVO or real PVR and have no plans to upgrade our equipment. We would probably still be trying to use a commodore or vic-20 if P4 PCs were not so inexpensive.)

We also have an Apple iBook. It is the ‘apple’ of our eye. Neatest little notebook ever made. It can do everything and more that our desktop PC can do. It can even access the internet, magically, without using wires! The only problem it has is hard drive space. That 20 gig is just about used up.

No problem. We have lots of storage on an external firewire drive. Trouble is that drive is NTFS so we can store video files on it. Stock Apples don’t do NTFS. At least the iBook we have does not normally do NTFS.

Well, it does now and all is well in our computer world.

Yesterday we installed macfuse which allowed us to install NTFS-3G. Those two programs allow the iBook to happily read and write to the NTFS files system.