NTFS Write Support On OS X Mountain Lion

If you have noticed, Mac OS X doesn’t support writing onto NTFS disks. But not to worry, you don’t have to install any third party drivers to enable this. Mountain Lion 10.8.3 already has native write support for the NTFS. OSX Mountain Lion does have built-in support for NTFS, and it can read and write. However, Apple does not enable it by default.  

Here is what you should do:

  • Uninstall other 3rd-party NTFS software, like Paragon, Tuxera or NTFS-3G.
  • Edit /etc/fstab (you can do this with “sudo vi /etc/fstab”)
    • Add the following line:
      LABEL=”VOLUME_NAME_WITHOUT_QUOTES” none ntfs rw,auto,nobrowse
    • Quit your editor
  • Now, just unmount and re-mount the disk
  • And we are done! You now have read-write support for this disk in OSX

Wait a minute, I don’t see my disk listed in the Finder window!

As of Mountain Lion, the “nobrowse” mount option is required for this to work. This means that the partition will not show up on your desktop. However, you can access it normally through Finder by doing the following:

  • Open Terminal and type “open /Volumes/THE_NAME_OF_YOUR_VOLUME” (without the quotes)
  • The Finder pops up automatically and you can see your disk listed there.

This implementation is definitely better than any 3rd party implementation available.

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149 thoughts on “NTFS Write Support On OS X Mountain Lion

  1. Great!
    It’s even working in my old OS X 10.6.8!

    The following worked:
    I had the “spaces problem” with the name of my hard dirve: Simpler thing to do, if you can, is connect the volume to a Windows machine and rename it to something without spaces.
    First you start Terminal. The easiest way is to use Spotlight search by pressing the little magnifying glass icon in the top right corner or you can hold the keys Command + Space. Once you have opened Spotlight search you type Terminal and you press enter.
    If all goes well the Terminal screen opens. Here you can type in “sudo vi /etc/fstab”. You might be asked for you password. Next you press the i key, you will see the name of the file in the bottom left corner change to – – INSERT – -. Type in the following line, LABEL=”VOLUME_NAME_WITHOUT_QUOTES” none ntfs rw,auto,no browse, replacing the “VOLUME_NAME_WITHOUT_QUOTES” with the name of your hard drive. When this is done you press Escape and then type :wq! followed by enter.

    If you want easier access to the volume, try this:
    1. Open Finder, go to “Go” in the menu bar and then “Go to Folder…”.
    2. Type “/Volumes” and hit enter. You should see your drive in the “Volumes” folder.
    3. Drag the drive to the left bar in the Favorites section.

    All in all, it’s so easy !
    Why Apple doesn’t allow NTFS read & write as standard, as it is possible…?

    Thank you all for the help!

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