How to enable read write support for Windows NTFS formatted drives in OSX Snow Leopard

Apple OSX Snow Leopard has the ability to mount NTFS volumes as read/write, but it's not enabled by default. Just read only is supported, as in 10.5.

Here's how to get full read/write support for NTFS drives in Snow Leopard. First, uninstall NTFS-3G or Paragon if you're using either one:

1. In Terminal, type diskutil info /Volumes/volume_name, where volume_name is the name of the NTFS volume drive. From the output, copy the Volume UUID value to the clipboard.

2. Back up /etc/fstab if you have it; it shouldn't be there in a default installation.

3. Type sudo nano /etc/fstab.

4. In the editor, type UUID=, then paste the UUID number you copied from the clipboard. Type a Space, then type none ntfs rw. The final line should look like this: UUID=123-456-789 none ntfs rw, where 123-456-789 is the UUID you copied in the first step.

5. Repeat the above steps for any other NTFS drives/partitions you have.

6. Save the file and quit nano (Control-X, Y, Enter), then restart your system.

After recently upgrading to OSX Snow Leopard and configuring a Mac Pro dual boot system with Windows 7, I needed to be able to read and write to the windows drives in the same machine, so this was the solution.

Hope this helps someone else.

posted by Tony