Read and Write NTFS Partitions from Mac OS X with MacFUSE

Nov 8, 2007 - 7 Comments

NTFS Update: The usage of third party tools for NTFS support is no longer necessary, as Mac OS X includes NTFS read & write support natively, here’s how to enable it. While newer versions of the Mac operating system support NTFS without any third party add-ons, older versions of OS X may still find value in MacFUSE. Keep in mind that if you’re in OS X 10.7, 10.8, 10.9 or newer – this is not necessary, and thus this article is really only relevant for much older versions of Mac OS X before 10.5.

I recently came across a great utility called MacFUSE which allows Mac OS X users to read and write to NTFS partitions, amongst other things. This is extremely useful if you have an external storage device you use on both a Mac and PC, and you want to avoid the limitations of FAT32.

Getting MacFUSE to work in OS X 10.4, 10.5, and 10.6 is not the easiest process in the world, and it takes some knowledge and patience to get functioning properly. Thankfully, LifeHack.org has a pretty decent walkthrough on setting up MacFUSE, so check that out if you’d like some guidance.

Again, this is for older versions of OS X like 10.4 Tiger, 10.5 Leopard, and 10.6 Snow Leopard. remember that new versions of OS X do not need to use MacFUSE to read and write to NTFS! You can follow this simple guide to enable NTFS in OS X Mavericks, Lion, Mountain Lion, and newer.

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Posted by: Paul Horowitz in Mac OS, Tips & Tricks, Utilities

7 Comments

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  1. annoy says:

    NTFS-3G worked great, i followed following blog since i was getting error after first install

    http://rajtalkontech.blogspot.com/2009/01/read-and-write-to-ntfs-from-mac.html

  2. ilinoisy says:

    thank you for LifeHack.org

  3. gantico says:

    Another free open source option is NTFS-3G: a driver that enables OS X to read/write NTFS.

    Here you are some more info:
    http://www.gantico.com/blog/2007/11/mac-pc-sharing-disks/

  4. stroom says:

    I am using the latest MacFuse and NTFS_3G under Leopard and it works. MacFusion supports a lot of other filesystems as well: e.g. sshfs. A nice tool is MacFusion, which gives you a GUI for Mounting ssh and ftp filesystems. Very useful if you possess a hacked iPhone or iPod touch.

  5. Anatoly says:

    Paragon NTFS OS X is released. It costs $30.00. This software provides reliable, rapid and transparent read/write access to NTFS volumes, like to native Mac partitions. Leopard is supported!

  6. Forrest says:

    Paragon NTFS OSX Beta3 ( not 3.3 ) works well in leopard and requires almost no effort to install. Beta4 is supposed to be a more polished final version, but costs ~$40.00.

  7. Man says:

    You might want to note that the version of macfuse talked about in that lifehack article is much older than what is currently available on the google code site. Has anyone got this working under 10.5?

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