Out of the box, Mac OS 10.5 comes with read access to NTFS. Here is how you can enable Mac OS to write NTFS formatted disks:

Download and install MacFUSE: MacFUSE is a google project that enables 3rd parties to extend Mac OS X’s ability to handle different filesystems.

Once you are done, you can upgrade and uninstall MacFUSE from System Preference panel:

Download and install NTFS-3G: NTFS-3G driver is available as a .dmg from macntfs3g.blogspot.com. I’ll recommend downloading the stable release. You’ll be prompted to restart your machine after installation.

That’s it! Now each time you connect an NTFS formatted disk to your system, you’ll be able to write files to it. The performance for me was a little slow – especially for large files (I tired copying a 30 GB VM disk to an external 5400 RPM USB 2.0 powered disk and it took close to 2 hours). But you’ll probably not notice it during your day-today usage.

As a bonus, the Disk Utility gets an ability to format disks as NTFS!

This entry was posted Friday, January 2nd, 2009 at 12:28 am and is filed under Software, Tips. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.