Write to NTFS on OSX Yosemite and El Capitan

README.md

Install osxfuse (3.x.x) from https://github.com/osxfuse/osxfuse/releases.

Install Homebrew:

ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"

Update Homebrew formulae:

brew update

Install ntfs-3g

brew install homebrew/fuse/ntfs-3g

If you are on OSX 10.11 (El Capitan), temporary disable System Integrity Protection.

[reboot by holding CMD+R to get in recovery mode]
csrutil disable
[reboot normally]

Create a symlink for mount_ntfs

sudo mv /sbin/mount_ntfs /sbin/mount_ntfs.original 
sudo ln -s /usr/local/sbin/mount_ntfs /sbin/mount_ntfs

If you are on OSX 10.11 (El Capitan), re-enable System Integrity Protection.

[reboot by holding CMD+R to get in recovery mode]
csrutil enable
[reboot normally]

Based on: http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/20889/how-do-i-write-to-ntfs-drives-in-os-x/213575#213575

@panuhorsmalahti : no, not necessary, just recommended.

@peta909 : not sure, try to uninstall ntfs-3g and re-install it.

Hi,

I am just a newbie here, and after I performed the above steps, and rebooted after the final step, I was not able to find my drive in question from within the Finder after plugging it in.

This is for the benefit of fellow newbies, but to see the drive(s), type the following command in the terminal and you should be able to see the drive(s) in the folder which opens up:

open /Volumes

Hope this helps.

It would be great if someone can shed some light on as to why the drives stop showing up on the Desktop and the Finder sidebar after performing these steps? Also, what can be done to achieve this?

P.S. I am using El Capitan 10.11.1.

@peta909

write this in the terminal

brew link homebrew/fuse/ntfs-3g.

if it ask to overwrite something do this :

brew link --overwrite  homebrew/fuse/ntfs-3g

it will solve the problem on El Capitan , as the ntfs-3g gets installed via brew but never got linked so it was not working, but it works after it gets linked to the system.

mine is working fine after this 💯

thank you, useful.
Worked both on OSX 10.10.5 and 10.11.1

@webshocker Thanks started working after linking.

Thanks! it worked

thanks man ! amazing :)

thanks @webshocker I had to relink

@webshocker force relink ntfs-3g 💃 thks

Uhm, okay so I'm pretty much a Newbie and would say I don't get most of the things. So what I missed might be something very marginal. Still hope you people can help me.

I have no problem until the part with creating a symlink. However once I try sudo mv /sbin/mount_ntfs /sbin/mount_ntfs.original it tells me "No such file or directory". If I do the linking stuff it'll tell me "Error: Could not symlink include/ntfs-3g/acls.h
Target /usr/local/include/ntfs-3g/acls.h
already exists. You may want to remove it:
rm '/usr/local/include/ntfs-3g/acls.h'

To force the link and overwrite all conflicting files:
brew link --overwrite ntfs-3g

To list all files that would be deleted:
brew link --overwrite --dry-run ntfs-3g"

So once I do brew link --overwrite ntfs-3g it then will tell me: "Error: Could not symlink include/ntfs-3g/acls.h
/usr/local/include/ntfs-3g is not writable."

(I have System Integrity Protection off.)

What did I do wrong? Thanks in advance.

Hi,

First of all thanks, it is functioning. But the performance is very low. What might be the reason? Is there any possibility to fix it?

sudo chmod -R 777 /usr/local/include/ntfs-3g
should solve the error

Hi there,
I'm running El Capitan on my MacBook Air and have followed Coeur's instruction down to typing "csrutil enable" in the terminal.
After the reboot, I'm getting the following messages:

Warning: homebrew/fuse/ntfs-3g-2015.3.14 already installed, it's just not linked
Elisas-MacBook-Air:~ elisa$ brew link homebrew/fuse/ntfs-3g
Linking /usr/local/Cellar/ntfs-3g/2015.3.14...
Error: Could not symlink include/ntfs-3g
/usr/local/include is not writable.
Elisas-MacBook-Air:~ elisa$ brew link --overwrite homebrew/fuse/ntfs-3g
Linking /usr/local/Cellar/ntfs-3g/2015.3.14...
Error: Could not symlink include/ntfs-3g
/usr/local/include is not writable.

Help would be much appreciated!

Thank you!
E.

If anyone else for whatever reason has no recovery partition, you can make a USB stick into a boot disk with these instructions and run csrutil from there

Thank you very for sharing the solution. It works properly in OSX 10.11.6.

Thanks so much, it works perfectly on OS X Yosemite.

@ElisaSchmidt
write this in the terminal
sudo chown -R `whoami`:admin /usr/local/lib/

I get the next error:

Error: The brew link step did not complete successfully

I run the doctor brew command to see what is happened:

brew doctor

It gives me the next warning:

Warning: The following directories are not writable:
/usr/local/lib/pkgconfig

I solved it whit:

sudo chown -R $(whoami) /usr/local/lib/pkgconfig