Write to NTFS on OSX Yosemite and El Capitan

README.md

OUTDATED, see comments below

Install Homebrew:

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

Update Homebrew formulae:

brew update

Install Homebrew Cask

brew install caskroom/cask/brew-cask

Install osxfuse

brew cask install osxfuse

Install ntfs-3g

brew install homebrew/fuse/ntfs-3g

If you are on OSX 10.11 (El Capitan)

sudo nvram boot-args="rootless=0"

And reboot.

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

Based on: http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/152661/write-to-ntfs-formated-drives-on-yosemite

I'm not able to write in /sbin after I ran csrutil disable in recovery mode. Read only filesystem message.

yo must do in recovery mode (reboot hold alt) to perform "csrutil disable"...

But still can write on mi ntfs drive!!! what else? i installer el capitan from upgrade, not a clean install...

To jeroenlammerts,
After running "csrutil disable" in recovery mode, reboot and then you can write in /sbin.

I have done all above, but my external ntfs disk still read only... Why?

Friends, how to delete all these installed packages?

I get

mv: rename /sbin/mount_ntfs to /sbin/mount_ntfs.original: Operation not permitted

@joanjgm, you have to disable the System Integrity Protection (SIP) first. Please follow the instructions of @nathyong. I've tried with success... :)

Used @nathyong instructions, executed all commands successfully, but it still can't write to NTFS. Any ideas how to make it work?
P.S. Previously I had Yosemite with NTFS-3G and everything worked fine.

after all operations, I see some error message

/sbin/mount_ntfs: line 14: /usr/local/opt/ntfs-3g/bin/ntfs-3g: No such file or directory"

and I check there has ntfs-3g this file

ll /usr/local/opt/ntfs-3g/bin/ntfs-3g
-r-xr-xr-x  1 soar  admin  51624 Oct  8 22:53 /usr/local/opt/ntfs-3g/bin/ntfs-3g

how could I fix this problem?

Hello All ,

I have tried disabling the csrutil in recovery mode (it worked :-)). now when i plugin my external hard drive its not showing up my NTFS drive on desktop . But when i go to the disk utility and click on show in finder i am able to see my hard drive and its content writable .

Please let me know what do i need to do if the drive needs to mount on desktop and show the icon so that it is easy for me to click and access instead of going to the disk utility every time ..

Waiting for the responses .

I have the same problem as @sukanth. Drive counter increases every time I connect it: https://www.dropbox.com/s/5otyjucno4h42p4/Screenshot%202015-10-11%2013.30.07.png?dl=0

EDIT: this helped me https://gist.github.com/mrpatiwi/8bca2f20b140150f1cbd#gistcomment-1586748 !

@aemdy I solved the increment issue by downloading the latest version of osxfuse from github
https://github.com/osxfuse/osxfuse/releases
Install it using the dmg, brew has an old version qith a bug.

Let me know if anyone gets the solution for the other one i have mentioned .

If your external drive is Seagate, you can use Paragon Driver for free. You can download it form here: http://www.seagate.com/support/downloads/item/ntfs-driver-for-mac-os-master-dl/

all commands executed, no errors but still can't write to external flash disk

@Losfer Thank you .. That worked perfectly well .. i have uninstalled all the previous softwares that i installed .

Can SIP be reenabled once the tools are installed?

@Losfer Thank you very much! I have seagate external hdd and this tool worked like a charm!

Thank you all!
I made it work following the instructions except for installing FUSE from https://osxfuse.github.io/ instead of brew.
It's working but the transfer speed is quite slow, it took me more than an hour to copy 25GB.
Is this normal?

Hi, as @sukanth also did I managed to install ntfs3g disabling csrutil, my problem though is that I use true crypt and while trying to decrypt a hard disk it says FUSE (the newest version from github) is not available, although installed and mounted. Anybody having troubles/solutions with that?

You don’t need to brew update just after the install step; the script did it for you.

Coming here to to state that installing osxfuse from their github and not from brew did the trick for me.
Also, the nvram part was indeed unnecessary.

PS: I'm on El Capitan

The problem I have currently is that the drives do not show up in the Finder.

I have installed OSXFuse over their site and have now the newest version (2.8.2).
I have installed ntfs-3g via brew and can now write to the external NTFS partition if I go to /Volumes/MY_DRIVE_NAME

But the drive does not show up on the desktop nor does it show up in the Finder sidebar.

I have the same problem as @func0der. Running the newest version of OSXFuse, and can access the drive via /volumes, however doesn't show up in finder or the desktop.

I use El capitan 10.11.1.
I followed the instructions, before creating a symlink for mount_ntfs, I disabled SIP, and after creating symlink I re-enabled SIP. But no success. I can't write to a NTFS formatted external disk.

@gwild I solved that issue by downloading the latest version of osxfuse from github
https://github.com/osxfuse/osxfuse/releases
Install it using the dmg, brew has an old version qith a bug.

@mforce This is not a bug in osxfuse 2.x. Replacing /sbin/mount_ntfs with /usr/local/sbin/mount_ntfs is basically a hack. If the NTFS-3G version of mount_ntfs was written properly there would be no issues with osxfuse 2.x. After all this is a NTFS-3G issue. In osxfuse 3.x the whole mount process has changed and works around NTFS-3G's shortcomings.

I've made a fork of this gist that addresses all issues from El Capitan: https://gist.github.com/Coeur/86a18b646a3b78930cf3

Mostly:

• You need osxfuse 3.0.x and not osxfuse from brew
• You need to disable System Integrity Protection and not Rootless

@func0der, @anaxonda have you resolved that problem?
I have the same: after executing all the steps I can write to external hdd but it doesn't appear in Finder sidebar((

I have the same problem as @gwild . Everytime, my drive becomes MYDRIVE 1, MYDRIVE2, and it takes longer to appears than before. Any way to fix this? (I tried @mforce solution but it didn't work for me). Thanks!

@Imakiel what version of osxfuse do you use? I just installed osxfuse 3.0.9 dmg from releases page and everything works fine.