Linux – How to mount a NTFS USB harddrive to Mac OS X that was unsave removed from Windows

linuxmacosmountntfswindows

I have a hard drive that gets plugged into several machines. One MacBook Pro running Mac OS X, some Ubuntu and Fedora Installations and sometimes Windows XP or Vista. Therefore, I formatted it NTFS to be able to read and write on it no matter which machine is used. On Mac OS I installed MacFUSE to do this.

The Problem is, when the USB device is removed from a Windows box, without using the "remove hardware" function from the task bar, the drive is locked. When I wnat to mount it in Mac OS, I get an error message and have to connect it to back to Windows and cleanly unmount it.

So, my question is: Is there an easy way to use the drive on every computer / OS without mounting problems?

Best Answer

The latest version of NTFS-3G for Mac allows you to force mount the disk, even when it wasn't disconnected properly.

Related Solutions

Macos – Mac OS X – Problems with file permission into NTFS usb drive

I've found a thread that deals with the very same subject. Files appear greyed out and can not be opened with the same error message.

Here are the steps to (hopefully) resolve it:

Open a Terminal and run
```
xcode-select --install
```
The above will install the XCode command line tools

Then, run

GetFileInfo /Volumes/WD320/yourfile.avi

There should be information about the file type and creator and other file attributes

Now, change those attributes by calling

SetFile -c "" -t "" /Volumes/WD320/yourfile.avi

Now the file should play

I obviously couldn't try it (which I'd normally do), but maybe it helps.

How to Copy Files to Read-Only NTFS Hard Drive on Mac

The problem is that your drive is NTFS formatted. OS X can't write NTFS out of the box (at least not without some tweaks). Here are some ways to do this.

Format the drive as FAT-32

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). Re-format the drive to FAT-32, which both Windows and OS X can read and write out of the box.

This is of course not a solution for files larger than 4GiB.

NTFS-3G via Homebrew installation

If you have Homebrew, installing NTFS support is as easy as running the following in a terminal:

brew install ntfs-3g

Then, follow the instructions on the screen. Homebrew will tell you how to replace the default OS X automounter so external NTFS drives are mounted using the new driver. Those are a couple of commands you need to run through your terminal.

NTFS-3G via GUI installation

This is a free version (there's also a paid one, and the free one's a bit harder to find).

First, download and install Fuse for OS X and select the MACFUSE compaibility layer during the install.
Then, download NTFS-3G, a free NTFS driver. Download the latest version from here and install it.
You will have a new option in System Preferences that enables you to write to NTFS drives.

Commercial solutions

These are not free, but offer support and promise better speed/stability.

Hacks

There is SL-NTFS, which isn't maintained anymore, but promises to enable NTFS write support on Snow Leopard (10.6).

Because 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. If you require a more robust, supported solution for writing to NTFS drives/partitions, I recommend you locate a more comprehensive solution.
This is a hack for enabling NTFS write support on OS X 10.6 which involves some command line tweaks. Again, use it at your own risk.