MacFuse + NTFS-3G: Reading and Writing NTFS Partitions on Mac OS X
Introduction
Even with the release of Leopard (10.5), everyone thought they would have NTFS write support. We had already missed out on user-friendly native ZFS...
In short, if you want to be able to write to NTFS partitions, you need to install MacFuse and NTFS-3G. Here's how to proceed.
Prerequisites
- MacFuse: http://code.google.com/p/macfuse/
- MacPorts: http://www.macports.org/
- X11: Mac OS X DVD
- XCode: Mac OS X DVD
Installation
It's fairly simple - download the MacPorts and MacFuse packages and install them. For the rest, everything is on the Leopard DVD.
Configuration
MacPorts
If this is your first MacPorts installation, run this command:
Then we'll install what we need. But first, let's get the MacPorts package list:
Next, install pkgconfig and ntfs-3g:
Usage
If you have Bootcamp installed or if your NTFS partition is already mounted, check the corresponding device using the "df" command:
Here, /dev/disk0s3
corresponds to Windows. So I'll unmount the partition:
Next, I need to create a folder called Vista for example in Volumes, then mount my device in this folder:
Then if you run df, it should appear and you can now access it :-)