Enable NTFS Write support on Mac OS X El Capitan

Sounds like we've read from the same book, chapter and page with regards to MS. Bottom line, it took several years of constant prodding to get me to change over to Mac and now, when I do use MS for anything more intensive than Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook, I'm immediately reminded of why I detest MS OSs.

In fact, those apps, Word, Excel and Outlook are the only things helping MS to survive and stay on top of the game. We use those apps frequently but that has probably become FAR less than 10 percent of the usage of these Macs. Outlook is still an outstanding email client and we actually use MS for email hosting for conformity, standardization, ensuring greater efficiency. But we keep the amount of time we have to touch those MS products to a minimum so troubleshooting is minimal relative to our OS X. We still use a couple of cheap Windows only desktops, running Windows 10, but for the little that we use those Windows desktops (mostly video conferencing, etc), they are problematic. Windows has just proved itself from my business experience to produce very fragile, vulnerable (from several different aspects) operating systems. Even a senior Microsoft manager acquaintance agreed with that, off the record and out of earshot of any witnesses of course!

Whenever I do have to personally use those Windows desktops, I immediately and automatically develop a dark cloud of disdain for Microsoft every time. We recently had to prep and format some legacy HDDs in NTFS, to send off to a client, and it was a real struggle ... just to get MS to recognize the drives (Macs had no problems even reading the NTFS formatt). In fact, Windows 7 would not recognize the drives consistently. We finally resorted to formatting the drives on the Macs as FAT32, then connecting to Windows (after several attempts!) to format the drives as NTFS. Good grief. More wasted time. The ghost of Microsoft still haunting me.

I tried this and it did not work.

text inside fstab:

LABEL=2_GB_NTFS_1_K none ntfs rw,auto,nobrowse

LABEL=128_GB_NTFS_1_K none ntfs rw,auto,nobrowse

I can see the 2_GB.. in Disk Utility but not in Finder

I don't see 128_GB.. in either

I tried mounting the 2_GB_ in Disk Utility but still does not show up in Finder

i ran "open /volumes" in terminal and still both do not show up in finder

- You should use Disk Utility to determine the Universal Unique Identifier

- Then use the following command lines to mount the NTFS drive

sudo nano /etc/fstab

and

UUID=Universal Unique Identifier none ntfs rw

This works in Yosemite. I have not experienced El Capitan yet, but should work too.

Source: http://macntfs.com/read-and-write-to-ntfs-drives-on-mac-os-x-using-disk-utility- and-terminal/

People living outside Apple's ecosystem know that NTFS is a more widely used format. E.g. a TV with a USB port is most likely to read an NTFS disk rather than an Apple formatted disk. Apple has solved so many difficult technical problems, I do not understand why it cannot write to NTFS.

It looks like a marketing decision: MACs can read from NTFS but cannot write. In other words: bring (read NTFS) your data to MAC but MAC will not give data back.

Pity

Apple has solved so many difficult technical problems, I do not understand why it cannot write to NTFS.

It looks like a marketing decision: MACs can read from NTFS but cannot write. In other words: bring (read NTFS) your data to MAC but MAC will not give data back.

Microsoft has solved so many difficult technical problems, I do not understand why it cannot write to HFS+.

It looks like a marketing decision: PCs can't even read from HFS+ much less write to it. In other words: if you use a Mac, go soak your head.

See how easy that is to turn around?

Both NTFS and Apple's HFS are proprietary. Neither licenses their drive format to anyone. Those solutions that exist were figured out on their own by the companies who make them. Such as Paragon's apps to write NTFS from a Mac, or their sister product that allows Windows users to read from and write to a Mac drive. In other words, neither is 100% compatible with either architecture. What they offer works, but not necessarily perfectly.

Once again, the best advice for folks with that view, obviously proponents and seemingly heavy users of Windows outdated file system is to return to an MS system only. Even MS's own newer operating systems have conflicts with drives formatted on olders OSs.

Although we still coexist in a heavily used MS business environment, little items like proprietary file systems have never been an issue in the 8+ years since we switched over to Apple and ... a productive environment! Users who are so reliant on an outdated, aging file system that they are inconvenienced by using Apple OS are on the wrong OS.

Yup, and it's not even much of an inconvenience. $19 software (Paragon's) and the issue is solved.

I would bet you remember the OS hodgepodge at the beginning of the personal computer revolution. It appears a lot of folks here don't remember it, or were much too young at the time. All kinds of PC's with their own OS. They all looked like MS-DOS (for the most part), but were completely incompatible with each other. There was Wang computer, Tandy, the DEC Rainbow, etc. Those and more on top of DOS and Apple.

People gripe about this one now easily solved issue of only having to deal with two major OS systems. They missed the real fun of trying to get files from one system to another when there were at least eight.

Kurt Lang wrote:

I would bet you remember the OS hodgepodge at the beginning of the personal computer revolution. It appears a lot of folks here don't remember it, or were much too young at the time..

Or they are old enough (like myself), to forget a lot of things. I still remember the IBM 1401 however. Heck, I remember punch cards. 😁

Heck, I remember punch cards. 😁

Me too. I didn't have to work with them, but my wife did. The thing you dreaded most was dropping a stack. 😮

and paper cuts. 😎

Kurt Lang wrote:

Heck, I remember punch cards. 😁

Me too. I didn't have to work with them, but my wife did. The thing you dreaded most was dropping a stack. 😮

or one wrong key stroke—and you had to toss the card and start over.

And now, it looks as though Multiple Sclerosis is heading in that direction once again, "...trying to get files from one system to another..." from some minor (?) issues we've been experiencing on customers' MS desktops.

Blaming Apple for not being able to access the closed, proprietary Microsoft NT File System format, is questionable. Microsoft has never published the internal of this file system format, and only the brave few have attempted to reverse engineer this "yet another proprietary lock-in-process" that Microsoft has so successfully used to maintain their monopoly. You'd think that Microsoft would be willing to do battle on a level playing field, but instead, leverages their dominance to mutate industry standards to force use of their own tools. Interoperability? Bah! Any attempt to use non-Microsoft products will be met with resistance, engineered into proprietary file formats, file system formats, protocols, unique Web protocols, etc.

A post must have been removed, or a couple. Yours and Kirk's comments appear to be answering something that isn't there.

@ Kirk,

Any attempt to use non-Microsoft products will be met with resistance, engineered into proprietary file formats, file system formats, protocols, unique Web protocols, etc.

I wonder how many remember the browser wars. Netscape and their Navigator browser pretty much had the field until MS released Internet Explorer with Windows 95. That was an extra paid browser, but they later made it free, all in the name of putting as many other browser competitors out of business as they could since none were free at the time. Worked on Netscape and a couple of others.

Then MS tried to make IE the de facto browser by implementing browser add-ons that would only work with IE. Namely, ActiveX. The whole idea was to make the web a Microsoft compatible experience only. Didn't have Windows? Well, then don't expect web pages to work right. Users finally fought back and the web has once again became what it's supposed to be - neutral to any OS or browser.

My all time favorite was the lawsuit brought against MS to allow users to remove IE from Windows. MS's lawyers made the outstandingly flagrant lie - in court - that IE had always been deeply rooted to Windows and could not be easily removed. I never heard if the courts fell for that. When IE was released with Windows 95, the only way to get it was by purchasing the separate Plus Pack. IE was on that installation DVD. It could be installed and uninstalled the same as any other app. So could at least the next version or two of IE. It wasn't until Windows 98 that MS built it into the OS as part of the installation.

Hi there

quite new to mac world, i had the problem of transferring datas from win world to mac world.

all suggestions recommended didn't work since the new os x.

but for me it worked FINE just installing osxfuse - http://osxfuse.github.io

no need for nags 3g, which i cannot install.

bye!

s_