I even tried my own tutorial to install NTFS-3G using older versions of the applications/drivers but that was the point where the serious troubles began. That version is clearly not compliant with Leopard. Where previously the disk was mounted automatically in read/write mode when connected, it was now mounted with the default Mac OS X read-only driver. The only way to mount the disk read-write, was to remount it using the commandline. While I still got the “filename too long” error in Finder, I managed to copy files to the disk using cp in the Terminal.

Updated version
It is only today that I noticed both NTFS-3G and MacFUSE have had an update only recently, so I started downloading instantly. First thing to do was to uninstall the NTFS-3G driver (using the uninstall command that was provided in the disk image). Sadly, there’s no such uninstall script for MacFUSE and I haven’t found a way yet to uninstall software that doesn’t place it’s files in the Applications folder and thus can’t be removed by just trashing the files. MacFUSE has to stay where it is. After installing both updated versions, the disk is not mounted as Network Drive (which was previously done). I opened the drive while thinking the update didn’t solve my issue, but then I noticed Finder wasn’t in read-only mode! I tried to copy files and directories and indeed, it works again. Removing files however won’t trash them first, they’ll be erased immediately which is rather strange, since the .Trashes folder has been created. The option to format a disk as NTFS is also back.

Steps performed

• Unmount any connected NTFS disks and fysically disconnect them
• Uninstall NTFS-3G if possible
• Install MacFUSE 1.1.1
• Reboot the Mac
• Install NTFS-3G 1.1104 (.dmg or .pkg)
• Reboot the Mac
• Enjoy the NTFS file system.

The last step is optional. I prefer more decent file systems like HFS+ or Ext3 in combination with their appropriate operating systems of course…

Using the NTFS file system on an OS other than Windows has always been a pain in the ass. It seemed really hard to implement it. Untill somebody on the AppleGeeks forum told me about MacFUSE and NTFS-3G for Mac (Local copy available)

Installation of the lates version is easy. Apparently, there were some problems in previous versions, but I didn’t encounter any problems on my Powerbook (yet?).

• Download MacFUSE-Core-0.2.5.dmg (latest version at time of writing this)
• Install MacFUSE and reboot your mac
• Download NTFS-3G 1.417 (Full).dmg (Local copy available).
• Install MacFUSE Tools included in the NTFS-3G full package. No reboot is needed
• Install NTFS-3G included in the NTFS-3G full package. No reboot is needed
• If you did already connect your NTFS external disk, open Disk Utility, select the NTFS volume and click Unmount (I mean unmount, and NOT Eject! However, Eject will work fine, only then you’ll have to physically disconnect the disk and reconnect it)
• Click on Mount. The NTFS volume now mounts as a read/write disk

Please Note: NTFS-3G doesn’t work (yet?) on encrypted nor compressed NTFS volumes. It is however possible to have some files compressed and others not. You can write in the uncompressed folders.

Further reading:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTFS_3G
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macfuse
• http://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifehack/how-to-read-and-write-ntfs-windows-partition-on-mac-os-x.html