NTFS hard drives don't mount

Question

NTFS hard drives don't mount

After updating from Snow Leopard, Mavericks cannot mount NTFS hard drives, either internal or external.

I have tried with at least 4 devices of different brands, Seagate, Toshiba, Samsung, Lacie and none of them could be mounted.

When I access the Disk Utility, the devices are shown but when I click mount, an error message says the device could not be mounted. I tried verifying and repairing disks but it was unsuccessful.

I've tried all I have found on forums, the SMC, different third party software (Paragon, Tuxera, MacFuse, OS X Fuse, ....) but nothing works.

FAT32 devices such as flash USB sticks are mounted.

I've seen lots of people asking for the same issue and none of them has received a successful solution, it looks like a great bug in Mavericks.

Posted on Aug 5, 2014 6:51 AM

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Answer 1

Loner T

Level 9

59,536 points

Aug 5, 2014 6:56 AM in response to nabuconodosozor

It is possible that kexts are cached.

On 10.9.3, from Finder. Can you check Console Logs? Third-party NTFS and Apple NTFS seem to conflict and cause problems.

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Answer 2

Aug 5, 2014 10:39 AM in response to Loner T

Thanks Loner for your tips.

I have checked system.log and this is the message when I plug an external hard drive:

Aug 5 19:31:41 x.local com.apple.kextd[12]: kext com.paragon-software.filesystems.ntfs 100009000 is in exception list, allowing to load

Aug 5 19:31:41 x.local com.apple.kextd[12]: Can't load /System/Library/Filesystems/ufsd.fs/ufsd.kext - no code for running kernel's architecture.

Aug 5 19:31:41 x.local diskarbitrationd[22]: unable to mount /dev/disk3s1 (status code 0x00000047).

Regarding the kext I cleared the cache (or at least I think I did)

The first line is suspicious as I uninstalled Paragon and any other third party NTFS reader/writer

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Answer 3

Aug 5, 2014 11:06 AM in response to nabuconodosozor

OK, I solved it. Loner gave me the clues and less than an hour after I could realize where the problem was.

Taking a look to the system log, I posted in a reply to Loner T, the line Aug 5 19:31:41 x.local com.apple.kextd[12]: Can't load /System/Library/Filesystems/ufsd.fs/ufsd.kext - no code for running kernel's architecture. is the key.

I have had some older Paragon versions running on my Mac which I've been updating regularly. There is an issue in the Paragon website that address this behaviour due to old files that remain in you computer.

Go to /System/Library/Filesystems if you find ufsd.fs file, please follow the instructions below:

run the following command in Terminal to remove the filesudo rm -rf /System/Library/Filesystems/ufsd.fs
run the following command
vi /System/Library/Extensions/ntfs.kext/Contents/Info.plist
If this file contains a line "com.paragon-software.filesystem.ufsd", then this file should be removed. Use this command to remove file:
sudo rm -rf /System/Library/Extensions/ufsd.kext
Clean cache: run the following command
sudo rm -rf /System/Library/Caches/com.apple.kext.caches/Startup/

Reboot your computer now

This worked for me, and maybe this is the same issue many people are experiencing, due to the widely spread use of Paragon.

Now I will install Paragon again to be able to write on NTFS hard drives, I hope it works correctly.

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Answer 4

Jan 15, 2015 3:55 PM in response to nabuconodosozor

You are genius! Its working. For now a cleared a cache and i can mount and read NTFS, it normal in OS X, but after my problems, its big progress! Now i am sure, its gonna be enough to install paragon again! THANKS a lot!

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