This is something I’m sure any Mac user will find helpful sooner or later, especially those of use running Intel chipsets with a bona-fide Windows installation via BootCamp. Have you ever been stuck in that predicament where you’re on your Mac, and you need to copy files over to a Windows-formatted drive? It’s not so easy, is it? Some of the solutions I’ve heard people come to involve using CDs & DVDs, thumbdrives, and network shares (which can be quite frustrating for some to get going). Fortunately, there is a better solution, and it’s a piece of cake to set up. Before I go on, I should mention that you must be using either OS X 10.4 (Tiger) or 10.5 (Leopard) for this to work. Older versions of OS X are unsupported.What we’re going to do is we are going to give OS X the ability to read and write to Windows NTFS drives. By default, OS X can only readinformation from these drives, but you cannot copy data on to them. So, let’s make our Macs better. This will only take a couple of minutes.

  1. Head over to the MacFUSE site (link) and download the appropriate version, depending on if you’re using Leopard or Tiger. For your convenience, I will post the direct links:
    1. Leopard – Direct Download
    2. Tiger – Direct Download
  2. Once the file is downloaded, double-click on the .dmg file and double-click the .pkg file inside. Then follow the instructions provided on screen, entering your password when prompted.
  3. Now that MacFUSE is installed (do not continue unless it is), head over to the site for NTFS-3G for OS X (link). Download the latest stable release (the developer notes which ones are stable). Again, mount the .dmg file by double-clicking it, then run the .pkg file inside, follow the instructions, and enter your password when prompted. When completed, you will be asked to reboot. Go ahead and do that, and when you boot back in, you’re done!

So that’s it. Two easy-to-install components, and you have the ability to make full use of Windows NTFS drives, which will make transferring data between your OS X installation and a Windows installation a breeze. Among other things, you will also be able to use a standard NTFS drive as a backup drive for both your Windows system and your OS X system. And copying data to an NTFS drive is as easy as drag-and-drop. Enjoy!