Mac OS X can read NTFS formatted drives but cannot write to themas it is a propriety format owned by Microsoft.
Oct 2, 2013 - Enable Mac OS X NTFS Write Support Using Drive UUID. You can also use the experimental NTFS write mounting with a drive name rather. This is due to the fact that NTFS, the file system utilized by Windows PCs, has limited support on Mac. While you can read files from these drives just fine, if you need to write to a PC-formatted hard drive, you'll need some third-party software to get the job done. Here are the tools you can use to work with NTFS-formatted drives on your Mac.
Third party software will allow the Mac full read and writeaccess to NTFS drives.
Paragon's NTFS-Mac is not free software. It contains a driverthat allows the Mac to read and write NTFS drives.
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Active7 years, 7 months ago
My coworkers use NTFS partitions, and I can't share my data with them, as NTFS on Mac OS X is read-only.
How can I read and write onto NTFS partitions?
user6124
AbimaelAbimael
6 Answers
For free, you can use the NTFS-3G driver. In order to use it, you have to install MacFUSE first.
In the end, you'll have a prefpane to mount and manage your NTFS drives
If you're running Snow Leopard, don't bother with various MacFUSE based solutions - NTFS support is built in, but disabled by default. To enable it, read this.
Snow Leopard has the ability to mount NTFS volumes as read/write, but it's not enabled by default -- just read only is supported, as in 10.5. Here's how to get full read/write support for NTFS drives in Snow Leopard. First, uninstall NTFS-3G or Paragon if you're using either one.
Here's how to get read/write support for NTFS drives in Snow Leopard:
In Terminal, type diskutil info /Volumes/volume_name, where volume_name is the name of the NTFS volume. From the output, copy the Volume UUID value to the clipboard.
Back up /etc/fstab if you have it; it shouldn't be there in a default install.
Type sudo nano /etc/fstab.
In the editor, type UUID=, then paste the UUID number you copied from the clipboard. Type a Space, then type none ntfs rw. The final line should look like this: UUID=123-456-789 none ntfs rw, where 123-456-789 is the UUID you copied in the first step.
Repeat the above steps for any other NTFS drives/partitions you have.
Save the file and quit nano (Control-X, Y, Enter), then restart your system.
After rebooting, NTFS partitions should natively have read and write support. This works with both 32- and 64-bit kernels. Support is quite good and fast, and it even recognizes file attributes such as hidden files. My thanks go to Chrysaor, a MacRumors user who brought this to our attention.
Alternately, you could use NTFSMounter, for a GUI utility to do the same thing.
I use NTFS-3G with really good success, never lost a bit also sharing the same disk with windows machines and a WD media player connected to my TV.
Only very minor issue I've found was that to proper reclaim space from the disk when I delete file I need to run a Maintenance utility or the Disk Utiity to recover space.
Here is a good description how to access NTFS partitions. Basically - install NTFS-3G via macports http://fernandoff.posterous.com/ntfs-write-support-on-osx-lion-with-ntfs-3g-f
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