Tuesday, December 25, 2012

Mac OSX write NTFS

Apple doesn't make NTFS writable even in latest mountain lion operating system, so after I switch to new Macbook with Retina Display, I have not write anything to 'My Book Essential' which is NTFS format. However, due to the macbook 256G storage limit, I have to look for backing up before delete ebooks, photos and videos. Then I need write data to NTFS.

First I downloaded and installed NTFS_1.0d2.dmg by mistake, which was quite old and dated in 2003. I should read the download info carefully before typing my admin password to install this wrong app (which is also using package installer wizard, not the drag&drop app installation).

Then I googled and tried to find a way to uninstall it, but the solution is not straightforward, I even could not find a easy-to-understand way (something like the Window control panel way).  To a rescue, I open the install package, and run the uninstall command shell, but I don't know if the uninstall is complete or not. Apple is always trying to hide the details from end user, good and bad.

OSXFUSE-2.5.4.dmg
https://github.com/osxfuse/osxfuse/downloads
ntfs-3g-2010.10.2-macosx.dmg
http://sourceforge.net/projects/catacombae/?source=dlp
are the solutions to get NTFS writable.

They are also package, but uninstall or update can be found from preference pane, which should be available in System Preferences once you have installed the package. In case you need run shell command from Terminal,
NTFS-3G
/System/Library/Filesystems/ntfs-3g.fs/Support/uninstall-ntfs-3g.sh
OSXFUSE (not sure if below works)
https://github.com/osxfuse/osxfuse/blob/master/packaging/uninstaller/uninstall-osxfuse-core.sh



No comments:

Post a Comment