[How To] Make Mac OS X automount NTFS Drives in read/write mode, Updated to Revision 2.1! Guide on replacing default NTFS mounter Options

[Laik]

This guide is rather fool-proof, but it involves messing with /sbin system directory, so remember, you're doing it at your own risk.

Big thanx to danielj7 and asstolavista from ntfs-3g forum for inspiration. Without them, this won't be possible.
Also I`d like to thank antoinef and Cliffton Beach for some really usefull comments in this thread that led to revision 2 of the Guide, and Greg134 for showing a simple solution to script problems with removable drives and spaces in partition name.

The Guide. Revision 2.1
1. Download and install MacFuse package, then reboot.
2. Download and install NTFS-3g package.
3. Download this file to your Desktop, then double click it, to extract the archive. The same file is attached at the end of this post, just in case.
4. Run Terminal from /Applications/Utilities Folder
5. Type cd ~/Desktop
6. Type sudo mv /sbin/mount_ntfs /sbin/mount_ntfs.old
7. Type in your password when requested and press Enter
8. Type sudo cp mount_ntfs /sbin/
9. Type sudo chown root:wheel /sbin/mount_ntfs
10. Type sudo chmod 555 /sbin/mount_ntfs
11. Reboot


After reboot, your NTFS drives should be mounted with read/write permissions automatically.
If you remount unmouned drives through Disc Utility, or plug in additional NTFS drives, they will be mounted with read/write permissions also.

Additional info for multilingual users
If you have files with names in languages, other then english, on your NTFS drives, they won't be shown by default.
To see such files, you must slightly edit the file extracted from the downloaded archive. You can edit it with TextEdit while its still on your desktop, or after completing the guide by typing "sudo nano /sbin/mount_ntfs".

Here's what should be inside the file by default:

#!/bin/sh

args=$#
MOUNTPOINT=${!args}
VOLNAME=${MOUNTPOINT##*/}
args=$((args-1))
DEVICE=${!args}
/usr/local/bin/ntfs-3g $DEVICE "$MOUNTPOINT" -o default_permissions -o locale=ru_RU -o volname="$VOLNAME"

With RED color, I highlited the locale section, where you can change your locale. I, myself, have files with names in Russian, so I use ru_RU locale to see these files.

To see a list of locales, installed in your system, open Terminal and type locale -a.

There is a chance, that after the folders with names in other languages appear, you won't be able to open files from them. In that case, just rename the folder once, and rename it back. Mac OS X will write the folder name in correct encoding and all files will open after this.

Restoring default NTFS mounter
In case anything went wrong, just run Terminal, type sudo mv /sbin/mount_ntfs.old /sbin/mount_ntfs and enter your password.

Please report success and failures in this thread if you try this method. Thank you.

Attached File(s)

 mount_ntfs.zip ( 315bytes ) Number of downloads: 223

 

[MB-switcher]

Hi,
external drives and volumes should be supported actually since it is only a front end app for ntfs 3g. The idea of having iMountIt actually came from the need I had to write on NTFS formatted external drives because I switched a few months ago and didn't want to reformat all the external drives I had. An updated version will be released soon though because susumu of McDoDesign supplied me with an awesome application icon that I hope everyone else will like too;)

MB-switcher