This is a hack for enabling NTFS write support on OS X 10.6 which involves some command line tweaks. If you require a more robust, supported solution for writing to NTFS drives/partitions, I recommend you locate a more comprehensive solution. There is SL-NTFS, which isn't maintained anymore, but promises to enable NTFS write support on Snow Leopard (10.6).īecause SL-NTFS is basically an interface for configuring the Apple NTFS driver, any issues you might encounter will be related to the Apple driver rather than SL-NTFS. These are not free, but offer support and promise better speed/stability. You will have a new option in System Preferences that enables you to write to NTFS drives. Download the latest version from here and install it. Then, download NTFS-3G, a free NTFS driver. This is a free version (there's also a paid one, and the free one's a bit harder to find).įirst, download and install Fuse for OS X and select the MACFUSE compaibility layer during the install. Those are a couple of commands you need to run through your terminal. Homebrew will tell you how to replace the default OS X automounter so external NTFS drives are mounted using the new driver. Then, follow the instructions on the screen. If you have Homebrew, installing NTFS support is as easy as running the following in a terminal: brew install ntfs-3g

This is of course not a solution for files larger than 4GiB. Re-format the drive to FAT-32, which both Windows and OS X can read and write out of the box. This is the obvious answer to those who don't want to install software that potentially could harm their data (which is always the case with hacks / unstable software). OS X can't write NTFS out of the box (at least not without some tweaks). The problem is that your drive is NTFS formatted.

External hard drive macbook air 2015