MacOS – Writing to an NTFS volume is disabled on 10.9.2

I stumbled on a post on IM.GETTING(THIS);, which explained the issue — and even provided a fix!

The problem seems to stem from the binary "fuse_wait" from NTFS-3G that's run as a final part of the mounting procedure - for some reason it can't detect that ntfs-3g mounted the volume and stays on a hopeless loop trying to detect this condition until it gives up after 15 seconds. So my workaround involves replacing the fuse_wait binary with a script that does more or less the same thing, but actually detecting (sort of) the mount operation and not timing out.

The fix

(Assuming the use of MacFUSE & NTFS-3G)

sudo mv /usr/local/bin/fuse_wait /usr/local/bin/fuse_wait.original
sudo touch /usr/local/bin/fuse_wait
sudo chmod 0755 /usr/local/bin/fuse_wait
sudo chown 0:0 /usr/local/bin/fuse_wait
sudo nano /usr/local/bin/fuse_wait

Copy & paste:

#!/bin/bash

MNTPOINT=$1
shift
TIMEOUT=$1
shift
MNTCMD=$1
shift

$MNTCMD "$@" &> /var/log/ntfsmnt.log
MNTCMD_RETVAL=$?

if [ $MNTCMD_RETVAL -eq 0 ]; then
        until [ `/sbin/mount | /usr/bin/grep -c "$MNTPOINT"` -ge 1 ] || [ $TIMEOUT -eq 0 ]
        do
                       sleep 1
                let TIMEOUT--
        done
fi

[ $TIMEOUT -eq 0 ] && RETVAL=1 || RETVAL=$MNTCMD_RETVAL

exit $RETVAL;

Save. Then:

sudo nano /System/Library/Filesystems/ntfs-3g.fs/ntfs-3g.util

Change the following line:

DEFAULT_NTFS_MOUNT_OPTIONS="auto_xattr"

to:

DEFAULT_NTFS_MOUNT_OPTIONS="auto_xattr,noatime,noappledouble,auto_cache"

Save. Reboot. Smile.

For details and alternative methods I wholeheartedly recommend reading through the aforementioned article and thank him, not me.

This is not possible using stock OS X since even on a normal drive (and not getting into any core storage considerations), diskutil does not support the UFSD_NTFS and NTFS formats:

Mac:~ bmike$ diskutil listFilesystems
Formattable file systems

These file system personalities can be used for erasing and partitioning.
When specifying a personality as a parameter to a verb, case is not considered.
Certain common aliases (also case-insensitive) are listed below as well.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
PERSONALITY                     USER VISIBLE NAME                               
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ExFAT                           ExFAT                                           
Free Space                      Free Space                                      
  (or) free
MS-DOS                          MS-DOS (FAT)                                    
MS-DOS FAT12                    MS-DOS (FAT12)                                  
MS-DOS FAT16                    MS-DOS (FAT16)                                  
MS-DOS FAT32                    MS-DOS (FAT32)                                  
  (or) fat32
HFS+                            Mac OS Extended                                 
Case-sensitive HFS+             Mac OS Extended (Case-sensitive)                
  (or) hfsx
Case-sensitive Journaled HFS+   Mac OS Extended (Case-sensitive, Journaled)     
  (or) jhfsx
Journaled HFS+                  Mac OS Extended (Journaled)                     
  (or) jhfs+

You would need to use a tool other than diskutil to perform the formatting, but the Apple tools will respect and leave alone these volumes or make space for them by leaving free space or a FAT/ExFAT partition that you could then erase and leave NTFS data on the drive. Additionally, the Paragon pre-sales FAQ for 10.0.2 doesn't mention either Fustion Drive or Core Storage, so I would assume they don't support this. Have you asked them if core storage is supported?