Apple - Write to NTFS-formated drives on Yosemite

Open Terminal.

If you have brewed osxfuse installed, you have to uninstall it, because unsigned kexts are banned now. Type:

brew cask uninstall osxfuse

On the other hand, if you don't have Homebrew at all, download it:

ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"

Updating Homebrew is recommended.

brew update

If you don't have Homebrew Cask installed, type:

brew install caskroom/cask/brew-cask

Install a binary osxfuse package from Homebrew Cask:

brew cask install osxfuse

Install ntfs-3g:

brew install ntfs-3g

You need to create a symlink for mount_ntfs, in order to make drives mount automatically:

sudo mv /sbin/mount_ntfs /sbin/mount_ntfs.original 
sudo ln -s /usr/local/sbin/mount_ntfs /sbin/mount_ntfs

If you are running OS X 10.11 and the commands above fail, try:

sudo nvram boot-args="rootless=0"

edit: This doesn't work for me in the final El Capitan (from Mac App Store). I had to disable SIP through recovery. Could someone confirm that this is indeed necessary?

... and reboot your machine. Then try symlinking mount_ntfs again.

Thanks to bjorgvino.

Quickly mount a NTFS disk read/write on all recent OS X (including Yosemite, El Capitan):

1. Open Application -> Utilities -> Terminal
2. Type mount and look for the line with your disk. It will show something like: /dev/disk3s1 on /Volumes/MyDisk (ntfs, local, noowners, nobrowse)

3. Type the following in the Terminal, replacing /dev/diskXsX with your disk as shown in the mount command:

   sudo mkdir /Volumes/Mount  
   

   *Make sure that the device is not already mounted, if yes, please unmount it first. Otherwise it will result in error: mount_ntfs: /dev/diskNsN on /Volumes/Mount: Resource busy

   sudo umount /Volumes/<device_name>
   sudo mount -o rw,auto,nobrowse -t ntfs /dev/diskXsX /Volumes/Mount/
   open /Volumes/Mount/
   

To make this change permanent run the following (correct for El Capitan):

1. Run the following command, changing /dev/diskXsX to your disk:

   export DEVICE=/dev/diskXsX   
   echo UUID=`diskutil info $DEVICE | grep UUID | awk '{print $3}'` none ntfs rw,auto,nobrowse 
   echo LABEL=NTFS none ntfs rw,auto,nobrowse
   

2. Run sudo vifs and paste in the output from the previous 2 lines. To do this press down to go to the bottom of the file, A to start adding text, paste in the 2 lines then press escape and :wq to write the file. (vifs is the only safe way to edit the fstab in OS X).

3. Run the following to mount the disk

   sudo umount /Volumes/$DEVICE 
   sudo diskutil mountDisk $DEVICE
   sudo open `mount | grep $DEVICE | awk '{print $3}'`
   

Note: The device will no longer automatically open a window when you attach it. To access it open a Finder window and select the Go -> Go to Folder to /Volumes

I normally use Paragon NTFS, but just tried this method with 10.10.1 and it seems to work after a rudimentary test [created a folder and copied few small files]

After disabling Paragon, a NTFS-formatted flash drive is not writeable:

I added that drive and the requisite flags to my fstab file:

Then unmounted and reinserted the flash drive. Note that it no longer shows up in the sidebar under Devices. You have to navigate to the /Volumes directory to find it. However, it is now writeable.

No third-party software required, but you do have to repeat this for every target NTFS volume.

Additionally, there is script that can set up everything automatically: http://sourceforge.net/projects/native-ntfs-osx/files/?source=navbar (just succeeded with it on OSX 10.5.5 Yosemite).