Mount NTFS volume?

[jst68]

How can I mount a NTFS volume into OS X? I tried the Disk Utility, but it fails with an error message. I am doing a Dual Boot and I would really like to read some files from my NTFS volume on the same hard disk.

 

Thanks,

JST

[jbjonas]

1- giving us the error message would help.

2- also, your system specs wouldn't hurt.

So inside OS X (what system version please?) you open Disk Utility... Click on the NTFS partition you want to mount, then click the blue 'mount' button at the top right? Then exactly what happens? If this isn't working, have you tried mounting it manually with terminal commands? Check this thread for help with doing that.

[jst68]

Error message says "Mount failed".

 

I read through the other thread and I think it might solve my problem. However I am having the same issue without having a Dynamic Disk. I will apply this to my installation tonight.

 

Did you ever figure out why the method for the automount at boot failed?

 

Thanks for your help.

 

Cheers,

JST

 

 

jbjonas,

 

Looking at your hardware I have one more question. My laptop uses the NVIDIA FX5700 Go which is basically an equivalent to your FX 5700. I understand that I can't have 3D acceleration at this time, but my resolution is also stuck at 1024x768. Is there a fix?

 

Thanks,

JST

[jbjonas]

You can try putting a custom resolution in your com.apple.Boot.plist file. Personally, I haven't tried it, as I'm nearly blind, and prefer it at 1024x768 even on my 19" monitor

[VaiOSX]

You don't need to use Disk util at all.

 

NTFS volumes will mount (read only) automatically, once detected.

[jbjonas]

You don't need to use Disk util at all.

 

NTFS volumes will mount (read only) automatically, once detected.

Yes, this might work for you and me, but for some people, the NTFS automount does not work. That's what we're trying to help these people with. But thanks for your input...

[jst68]

That is an interesting statement though. So, for some people a dual boot NTFS partition shows up autmatically without doing anything? Did anybody figure out what could be the possible reason? Are these people using two hard disks? I only use one and Windows XP lives in the first partition. Hmmm, could it be the order of partitions or the choice of the boot manager? I am using Acronis OS Selector... I wonder if some boot managers hide partitions or something like that?

 

Thanks,

JST

[jbjonas]

My NTFS drives automount at boot fine (usually... see this post)

But I do have my OS X on a separate drive... However, I also use Acronis (version 9)... that doesn't seem to interfere (I suggest NOT messing with any Acronis options to hide things- in case you did)

[bluedragon1971]

Is the NTFS partition a primary or extended one? That might be what is making a difference. OS X sometimes seems to have "issues" with extended partitions. FWIW, when I still had XP on this machine, it's primary NTFS partition was detected automatically.

[marliwahoo]

I can read from my ntfs partition but not wtrite to it. I'm not sure if that is the default or not, but here is what I did.

 

In windows I set up sharing for the entire drive with all users of of this machine. I am the only one who uses this machine so it is safe. Now all files are viewable and readable. I'm not sure - but I don't think everything was readable before.

 

For all documents, pictures and music ...... I set up a SWAP partition (fat 32) so that windows and mac can read & write to it. Now I have one music/document/picture/media folder for both os's. So far it works well.

[VaiOSX]

If you want your NTFS partition to automount in OS X, it should be the first (primary) partition in your harddisk.

 

OS X doesn't mount extended NTFS partition (and got some trouble with extended Fat32 partition).

 

My harddisk is partitioned like this :

 

 

Disk0s1 WinXP (NTFS)

Disk0s2 OS X 10.4.3 for updates and safe recovery (HFS+ Journaled)

Disk0s3 OS X 10.4.4 (HFS+)

Disk0s4 OS X 10.4.5 (HFS+)

Disk0s5 DMGs and ISOs STORAGE (HFS+)

 

I use MacDrive to mount All those HFS+ partitions in XP.

[giggleface]

I have WinXP on partition 1 of my hd (primary), Mac OS x 10.4.4 on partition 2 (primary) and Fat32 (extended) as a third partition.

 

Unfortunately, my NTFS partition 1 mounts (even in disc manager in Mac OS X) but i can't see any files. Please help!

[njbamboo]

Hello, everybody.

I am a newbie. I have one question about mounting NTFS disk in MacOSX10.4.5 system.

I have three hd, two SATA disk and one PATA disk. I installed WindowsXP in the primary SATA disk and MacOSX in the PATA disk. When I entered MacOSX system, I got a error messenge that: Disk Mount failed. After chosing ignore or eject, I could use MacOSX finder to see my MacOSX disk and WindowsXP system disk,BUT I could NOT see any partition of the second SATA disk. Would you please tell me why I can not see it? Thank you.

Btw, sorry for my poor English.

[MarlboroEdo]

Seems the good time to learn some good unix commands!

To see every partition the system recognize here's the clue:

 

1) Open Terminal (/Applications/Utility/Terminal)

2) if you didn't change your root password this is a good time:

a) do "sudo passwd" (ENTER)

you'll be asked for your current password: write it and (ENTER)

c) you'll see "Enter new UNIX password:" Try to guess what to do!

d) enter the password again: Here you are

3) now become administrator (root): enter "su" (ENTER); you'll be asked for the password

4) to see every disk enter "ls /dev/disk*" (ENTER)

these are your partitions. A simple explanation: Unix calls partitions "slices". For exaple, the first partition on the first disk will be called "/dev/disk0s1" that means disk 0 slice 1

5) find in this list the partition you'd like to mount

6) Every partition needs a "mount point", a directory that host the filesystem. In windows this is a special directory called "C:". To create a mount point for your partition execute "mkdir /Volumes/mywindrive". This will create the directory "/Volumes/mywindrive"

7) you're almost done. For your ntfs win partition execute "mount_ntfs partition_dev_name /Volumes/mywindrive", where partition_dev_name is the /dev/disk?s? you found at point 5)

8) If everything is fine with the partition you'll find your files in /Volumes/mywindrive. To reach that from Finder you have to use "Go to folder" from "Go" menu and enter /Volumes

 

Please thank for little guide

[Wenle Z.]

how can I have partition on my hard drive ( or single drive) that can be read and write under XP and OSx?

[belgrano]

how can I have partition on my hard drive ( or single drive) that can be read and write under XP and OSx?

By formating it as FAT32.

[capran]

I have the opposite problem. I don't want my NTFS partition to automount. I tried putting a script in a StartupItems folder in /System, but it doesn't work. Ideas?

 

My script was just this:

 

eject-foobar

 

#!/bin/bash

umount /Volumes/foobar

 

It'd work if I ran it from a terminal, but in the boot text I'd see this,

/System/Library/StartupItems/eject-foobar/eject-foobar file not found.

 

I don't know why it was doing that, as it was just a text file, not a directory. Permissions were 755.

[orph3us]

I have a strange problem regarding mounting ntfs drives in osx... i only tried one of my ntfs drives and while it did mount and reads the size and space available on the disk correctly, i can't see any of the files on the disk. ive tried reading it through the terminal and remounting it with mount -t ntfs and so on, but i can't seem to read from it in osx. i also tried making it active from windows but that didn't change anything :/.. how do i check if it is extended from windows? i thought that in disk manager in xp it would say if it was extended but i couldnt find it..

[Dense]

I've started debugging this problem. I think I have a way to test whether you will experience the problem but I need to confirm this. Can anyone that can't mount a volume run this command via sudo.

 

sudo /System/Library/Filesystems/ntfs.fs/ntfs.util -p disk0s1 fixed readonly

 

replace disk0s1 with the disk and slice number of your NTFS partition.

 

I get the following error:

 

ntfs_fixup: magic doesn't match: 00012ace != 454c4946

 

I did a bit more looking and it seems this is related to NTFS "fixups". Did some googling and found this source:

 

http://www.opensource.apple.com/darwinsour...roj/ntfs_util.c

 

* Process per-sector "fixups" that NTFS uses to detect corruption of

* multi-sector data structures, like MFT records.

 

if (fixup_magic != magic) {

printf("ntfs_fixup: magic doesn't match: %08x != %08x\n",

fixup_magic, magic);

return (EINVAL);

 

Thats the limit of my knowledge so far. I do know I can mount the filesystems using the mount_ntfs command but diskarbitrationd uses ntfs.util which cant do it.

 

Anyone able to provide some more knowledge with the information I provided?

 

I also have a ktrace output if it will help.

[munky]

just a note of interest... i had an NTFS XP install on the 'other' partition of my OSX boot drive, and two further disks which were NTFS.

 

OSX autodetected and mounted the NTFS partition on the same disk, but gave two error dialogs on every boot ("You have inserted a disk which is unreadable" or something) - one for each disk.

 

i did a bit of digging and concluded that OSX will see (and automount) NTFS partitions on 'basic' disks, but cant understand disks which have been 'upgraded' to dynamic disks in w2k, xp or 2k3.

[binary]

I had the same issues with my extended NTFS partition not mounting. Here's what I have done:

 

Open Disk Utility, and find the partition ID that is not mounting (it'll most likely be greyed out)

 

Create a file in private/etc/ named rc.local.

 

In the rc.local file add:

 

mkdir /Volumes/*

mount_ntfs /dev/diskXsX/ /Volumes/*

 

* Being the name you want for your mount point, I called mine Documents so you'd put mkdir /Volumes/Documents.

 

X being your partition ID. Mine was disk1s5. You can add more mount points depending on how many extended drives you need to add, just add the two lines again with different info.

 

After you add those lines with your data, save the file.

 

These volumes should now mount on startup. Sometimes I've found I had to add a few mount lines to rc.local because the partition was mount ing with different ID's on occasion, so you may have to do the same as well.

[miliuco]

1. In my system, the 2 NTFS partitions (primary and logical, both in the same SATA disk, different of the Tiger SATA disk) are automounted always RO (read only) (this is the default behaviour).

2. The only filesystem that can be accesed RW (read and write) by both OS (XP and Tiger) is FAT32.

3. To mount / unmount NTFS partitions, we must use this command:

/usr/sbin/diskutil unmount /dev/disk0s1

(unmounts the disk0s1 partition)

/usr/sbin/diskutil mount /dev/disk0s1

(mounts the disk0s1 partition).

4. Tere is a bash shell script that mounts a disk if it's unmounted and unmounts it if it's mounted (the disk is selected by the volume name, change Disco_Windows in the script for your appropiate volume name, you can see it in the /Volumes folder). If we save this script from TextEdit with the COMMAND extension in any folder, and we make it executable with this command:

sudo +x path_to_file/file.command

then we can make alias to the script and run it at will.