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Guide: Enable native NTFS Read/Write in Snow Leopard

BEWARE!!! This is very RISKY!

To: Anyone considering using method described here to enable R/W for NTFS.

It is not reliable. In fact it is actually quite dangerous to use it for moving or copying files (to, from on on an NTFS partition)...


I lost a lot of data, I actually had it happen several times before I learned my lesson! LOL
I did fairly extensive research hoping to recover it (and some was recovered, everything was recovered in one case). While doing that research I discovered that there a quite a few people who have had serious trouble with this feature!
PLEASE be warned- make sure everything important is backed up! And be aware that the danger increases if the partition contains an installation of windows.

Apple dropped support for this feature for some reason. The prevailing theory is that Microsoft would not give them a license. Even if that is true, they have obviously stopped monitoring, maintaining and developing the feature. (Or even if they haven't, they aren't releasing the changes.)

So the longer it's been since they dropped support: the HIGHER the chances for data LOSS or CORRUPTION- this is due to the changes and updates that have been made to the system kernel and its supporting components...

I really wish there was a reliable way to have full access to NTFS partitions in OS X using the 64 bit kernel... I hope that someone will develop something soon! I'm quite surprised that microsoft hasn't jumped on that!


The original member who posted this should do the responsible thing and edit the original first post and warn people of the increasing risk of using this unsupported, unstable feature.
 
JonnyD75 said:
The original member who posted this should do the responsible thing and edit the original first post and warn people of the increasing risk of using this unsupported, unstable feature.
Click to expand...

Forgot about this topic, edited the first post with warning.
 
Please help!

I think I used the automated script that someone posted here or macfuse and ntfs3g (sorry I don't remember which). I now have 2 significant issues:

1) On an external ntfs HD, I renamed a folder with a "/" forgeting that those are illegal for windows folder names. When I went to open the drive from a windows machine the folder showed up as a 0kb file. Renaming the file from either mac or pc does not bring the folder (or it's valuable contents back). This was my "backup" so I no longer have a backup of those files anywhere...

2) I have deleted the app Macfuse and ntfs3g (although I don't know if I uninstalled it or it's driver? Yet now, Time Machine is messed up! It creates a time machine backup onto my external drive (extended journeled). but Finder cannot view any of the files on the backup! The Time Machine backup cannot be read by other macs either.

Is there a way to tell if I changed my native Mac NTFS driver? If I did, can I restore my old one?

What if MacFuse left it's driver, should I reinstall the app and then remove it?

Should I run chkdisk or some utility app from either a mac or pc to recover my files?

Please help! Thanks
 
From my perspective - there is a lot of problems with NTFS write on OSX with every tool I checked: Paragon for NTFS, Tuxera for NTFS and NTFS-3G. I always have the same issue: can not delete data from OSX Trash or with 0 bytes files. The only solution is to delete them in recycler under Windows. This is ridiculous. Last time Disk Utility destroys my NTFS partition which was not visible at all - luckily I fix this under Windows. Do not spend money for them - thery are buggy !

Now I am thinking about back to Windows - maybe it is a little bit slower, problematic but there is no significant issues with Windows but you have a worldwide standard OS that support almost every website, tools, software with native NTFS, FAT32 and exFAT support without issues and loosing data during transfer (only when hardware failure occures). What is more important you have hundred recovery tools you can use it i critical situation - some are freeware like NTFS Reader. For Mac maybe two or three. There is some other advantages - better Flash support, better GPU support, full WMV with DRM support, native MS Office support with VBA, you can copy protected optical disk with Alcohol software which is impossible with all these toy look like software like Roxio or DragonBurn, no buggy plugins, tools that cost $$ etc etc Too much problems, too much issues and Apple users are limited to Jobs future visions - no Blu Ray, no HDMI, no Flash and other things that are extist today. What will be a difference between coming Macs with iCore x and other Asus laptops ? Probably none - maybe a little bit better workmanship, better LCD panel and that's all. We have lower price, much less heat dissipated via case, 10 hours on battery, gesture support, backlit keyboard and Optimus NVIDIA technology.
 
..............

whenever i try to edit /etc/fstab it just says new file, when i save it and try to open it again, its just another new file my /etc/ contains: fstab.hd, fstab.save, fstab.save.1, fstab.save.2 clearly those are the saved ones, but they dont activate on boot, still get you can only read
 
Contents Unaccessible!

Man! I wish I had read the latter pages of this thread as the posts on the first page are WAY misleading!

I followed the instructions on the OP and this worked flawless for me. However now I cannot see any of my files or folders on my mac OR pc! I have seriously important files on this drive and I need some help getting them back please.

Right now windows will not open the drive unless I format it. My mac can see the drive (tho on a reboot I had to unplug and plug the drive back in to see it on my desktop) I can also open the drive but it says that there are 0 items despite the disk space available remains the same as it was when the drive worked.

Please, can anyone tell me what they did to recoup the contents of their drive after this process failed miserably?

Thanks much in advance
 
Chrysaor said:
This is experimental, and known to be unstable, use at your own risk.

I am sure many of you heard that Snow Leopard was supposed to have native read/write for NTFS partitions. Apple supported NTFS R/W in older SL builds but I guess decided to not to go with it for some reason, however support is still present.
For this, you need to modify your /etc/fstab file to mount NTFS partitions for read and write.

First, uninstall NTFS-3G/Paragon if installed.
Open Terminal.app (/Applications/Utilities/Terminal)
Type "diskutil info /Volumes/volume_name" and copy the Volume UUID (bunch of numbers).
Backup /etc/fstab if you have it, shouldn't be there in a default install.
Type "sudo nano /etc/fstab".
Type in "UUID=paste_the_uuid_here none ntfs rw" or "LABEL=volume_name none ntfs rw" (if you don't have UUID for the disk).
Repeat for other NTFS partitions.
Save the file (ctrl-x then y) and restart your system.

After reboot, NTFS partitions should natively have read and write support. This works in both 32 and 64-bit kernels. Support is quite good and fast, it even recognizes file attributes such as hidden files.


Alternative Method by iBlacky:
Rename the original /sbin/mount_ntfs tool:

sudo mv /sbin/mount_ntfs /sbin/mount_ntfs.orig

Create a script like this:

#!/bin/sh
/sbin/mount_ntfs.orig -o rw "$@“

save the script to /sbin/mount_ntfs

sudo chown root:wheel /sbin/mount_ntfs
sudo chmod 755 /sbin/mount_ntfs

Enjoy R/W access to NTFS volumes...

In case you don't like it

sudo mv /sbin/mount_ntfs.orig /sbin/mount_ntfs

and everything is back to R/O.
Click to expand...


There was a slight typo with the double quotes but this workaround works very well. The correct syntax is as follows :

#!/bin/sh
/sbin/mount_ntfs.orig -o rw "$@"

thanks
 
yeah thats why I passed on this. I'd rather not be able to do anything with my NTFS files in osx rather then corrupt all my partitions.
 
What about the USB drives, do we need a restart for every use?

Hi,

I have a USB external drive and I want to use it in all operating systems(windows, mac and linux) assuming that I format it in NTFS, now:

Do I need to restart the computer every time I want to use it in Mac OS X, or I need to restart the machine for every use because I need to mount it using the fstab file and fstab file can not hold invalid entries.


Thanks.
 
Like one of the posters above I sincerely regret not reading the latter half of the thread, I used the first method in the OP and I'm worried that some permanent damage may be done to my HD if I don't hurry to reverse the change; every time I boot into Snow Leopard now, my Windows partition shows 0 bytes and the BCD table breaks (apologies if my terminology is wrong, I'm not very computer literate) and I am required to uses my repair disk to fix it. As I say, I'm worried that more severe damage might happen as time goes on, could anyone tell me if it's possible to reverse the change I made? Again, it was the first method in the OP.
 
Script to enable native writing to NTFS in Mac OSX

Hi everybody!

I build a script to enable native writing to NTFS in Mac OSX.

Run the first time to enable writing to NTFS.
Rerun to disable writing to NTFS and return to its original configurations.

download:
http://www.4shared.com/file/qgVo_aAj/macosx_ntfs_read_write.html
in the terminal:
sh macosx_ntfs_read_write.sh

Its use the native writing NTFS Mac OSX.

I hope to be useful.
 
I have been looking for something that will work with all OS's (Mac, Windows, and Linux) but looks like it is extremely complicated to do. I would be nice if someone would invent a universal filesystem that is open and easy to use and ALL OS's are required to support it. One can dream..... :p
 
NTFS Unable to show files

pontiacy said:
Thanks for the heads up. It works for me. however, I encountered 2 problems.

1. When I tried to delete a certain folder, it became 0 byte but was still shown in the trash with an error msg (file corrupted or something). It happened before (mainly with folders). But previously, I could go to disk utility - first aid - repair disk to correct this. However, now the 'repaire disc' button is disabled for these NTFS disks.

2. When I tried to save a pdf file in its original place (i.e., replacing the original one) using Acrobat, I suddenly got an error msg, then I found the folder the file was in was empty! (I had over 2GB of files in that folder!)

-------------------
Update: I was able to solve these problems. I used the chkdsk command line utility (in particular, run cmd, then type 'chkdsk K: /X' where K is the drive letter, /X means to unmount it first) to repair the disk under windows. The contents in the folder were intact.

Also, I was able to find and delete the /etc/fstab file eventually, by going to finder-go to folder- '/etc'. After I reinstalled paragon, the repair disk button is clickable again.
Click to expand...

:eek:
I've encountered the same problem. After watching a video thought USB cable from my multimedia HDD, all the content of the device desappears. Mac show me there're 250 GB writed on the HDD but no files are shown.
Windows tell me that the unit is unreadable. I think this problem is like the 2one.
The Chk procedure did you check is from Window or mac?
 
Hi,

I have an external ntfs HDD (1To) and I'v tried the Chrysaor 's two solutions to copy data from my iMac (snow leopard).
None of it works (NTFS Mounter 0.4 either) and now I can't see my HDD anymore. It appears only in the disk utility as you can see in the picture below and it works also well when I connect it to my Macbook.
Is anybody have an idea of the problem and more specifically know what to do to mount my HDD without converting it (it doesn't seem to be the problem) and loosing my data.
In fact I'd like to delete what I wrote and wrong my computer.

Thanks

 
Mac à fond said:
Hi,

I have an external ntfs HDD (1To) and I'v tried the Chrysaor 's two solutions to copy data from my iMac (snow leopard).
None of it works (NTFS Mounter 0.4 either) and now I can't see my HDD anymore. It appears only in the disk utility as you can see in the picture below and it works also well when I connect it to my Macbook.
Is anybody have an idea of the problem and more specifically know what to do to mount my HDD without converting it (it doesn't seem to be the problem) and loosing my data.
In fact I'd like to delete what I wrote and wrong my computer.

Thanks

Click to expand...

Mr., I've got a similar problem as you. Now I'm using on my mac NTFS-3G, freely downloadable from web and it's working fine. Read/write it's fully supported and the dismounting is user friendly.
Before i tried the native r/w support, but the file's MFT record will corrupted in a couple of hours. I recovered the datas using easy recovery, with the default settings and with a windows based system. windows doesn't show any content in the hard disk too.. after the operation long about 15h, all the datas was restore, without lost any file.

..enjoy it!
 
I don't think the free version of the Tuxera stuff supports 64bit on the new Macbooks...

I just bought Paragon and it seems to work pretty well...

R
 
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