I find it convenient to share files between systems using an external hard drive, including Windows, OSX, and Linux. The challenge is that different operating systems use different filesystems by default. I’ve been using Microsoft’s NTFS as a common denominator. On Linux, package ntfs-3g supports NTFS, and on OSX the procedure described in this article worked fine until recently. One fine day last week after a system software update, my Air lost the ability to write to NTFS. The old procedure to enable write support for NTFS no longer worked.
Apple seems determined to prevent people from having a simple, seamless way to share files with non-Apple systems other than an online service like Dropbox. So, people have to keep coming up with solutions. Here’s how I regained access to my cross-system hard drive this weekend.