dennis.ca

OSX has no problem reading Microsoft NTFS-formatted disks, but writing to them is another story. I need this functionality to work with various external drives and USB keys that need to be shared with Windows machines.

It turns out that this capability can be had without too much hassle using the procedure below.

Before you even think about beginning, back up your data! -- both OSX and NTFS. If something goes wrong you'll regret not having done so. If you need help backing up NTFS drives, read my entry on using Winclone. The nicest backup tool I've encountered for OSX is SuperDuper!

1. If you have an NTFS external drive or USB key connected to your system, eject and disconnect for the being.
2. Download the MacFUSE disk image from Google and install. At the time of this entry, the latest version is 0.4.0.
3. Download the NTFS-3G driver and install. At the time of this entry, the latest version is 1.913.
4. [Optional] Download MacFusion, copy to your Applications (or Utilities) folder and run. MacFusion doesn't yet support NTFS-3G, but it does allow you to do some handy things with SSH and FTP filesystems. Omitting this step won't affect your ability to read/write NTFS disks.
5. Reconnect your external drive or USB key; the volume should be automounted and read for read/write use.
6. [Optional] If you're using a machine localized for a non-English region, it would be a good idea to place a file in the root of your NTFS volumes called .ntfs-locale. In it, add one single line to represent your locale. For example, French/Canadian would be fr_CA. An entire list of locales your system supports can be viewed via terminal with the command locale -a.