One option is to back up your old Windows external drive (using ). Reformat the drive using Apple's Disk Utility software and the company's HFS+ file system instead. Then you can restore the backed up data to the drive. Even if the backed up and restored files originally came from a PC, they'll be stored on the drive using a file system the Mac fully understands. That way the drive will be fully Mac-compatible without any need for you to modify the operating system of the Mac to get it to work properly.
Obviously that solution doesn't work for everyone. Maybe the drive you're using has to be used with a PC occasionally. Whatever the case, the good news is that it's not a show-stopper: There are a few utilities out there that will enable Macs to write to mounted NTFS volumes. Tuxera's is one of the best ways to do it. It uses smart caching to keep data transfer as fast as possible and works with every OS X version since 10.4 (Tiger). NTFS for Mac costs $31, and you can download a demo first to see how it does. Paragon Software's is another excellent choice.
It includes several additional utilities for people who need to tinker or repair, to enable you to format drives with NTFS, check NTFS partition integrity, fix errors, and more. NTFS for Mac costs $19.95. If you're a DIYer and you'd like to go the free route, you'll find a Sourceforge project called that gets the job done.
While copying files from a Mac, I had to change something to a GPT. It is a Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex. I would like to be able to access the files I have on it from.
NativeNTFS isn't for rookies: It's a bash script that needs to run from the Terminal command line and requires you to have root (administrator) access to your computer. An easier way to go is to download, a third-party software tool that extends the Mac's file system capabilities. Follow the directions on the OS X Fuse website to download and configure the software. Follow the instructions to download, whose development seems stopped right now but still works in Yosemite. Once OS X Fuse and NTFS-3G are installed, your Mac should be able to read and write to NTFS disks just fine.
Different operating systems store files in a variety of ways by using different system formats. For instance, all the internal hard drives in Macs use the “OS X Extended” file system. This is the file system all Mac-compatible external drives also use in order to read, write, and copy files to and from the computer.
Windows, on the other hand, uses NTFS,. By default, Macs are only partially compatible with the NTFS file system. This means that NTFS-formatted hard drives—like most hard drives used with Windows — are read-only when plugged into a Mac. The Mac can recognize the drive so that you can view the files on it, but you can’t copy files out or into the hard drive. There is another type of file system called FAT32 that can be read and written to by both Windows and Mac computers, but it’s not the default file system that comes with. You could reformat the hard drive to change the file system to exFAT, but this is inconvenient because it doesn’t allow transferring of files larger than 4GB. At some point in the past this limit may have been sufficient, but with a movie and graphic files now exceeding that, FAT32 is no longer feasible.
I recommend instead using NTFS apps are third-party solutions that enable you to overcome this restriction. Once you install an NTFS app, you’ll be able to read and write from an NTFS-formatted drive. So if your office computers are all running Windows but you use a Mac at home, you can transfer files between them using an NTFS-formatted hard drive. Or if you used Bootcamp to create a Windows partition on your Mac, you can access files in this partition with ease. Top 3 Best NTFS Apps of 2018 For macOS High Sierra Here are 3 of the best NTFS apps for Mac. Let’s take a look.
Paragon NTFS for macOS Paragon is arguably the most widespread and famous NTFS app for Mac, and with good reason. It installs cleanly into the System Preferences Panel and integrates nicely with native Mac notifications. Paragon seamlessly offers its drivers up for use when needed so that NTFS hard drives automatically are recognized as readable and writable.
Paragon also automatically checks for updates daily so that you don’t have to. If you’re using an NTFS-formatted Seagate drive, a version of Paragon that only works with Seagate products is available free to download and use. Otherwise, you can download the 10-day free trial. Advertising Paragon on Facebook extends your free trial for another five days. One activation key costs $19.95, but the price goes down if you buy multiple licenses at once.
Tuxera Tuxera is another paid NTFS app for Mac. Much like Paragon, its driver integrates seamlessly, e.g.
Drives are automatically recognized as read-write upon mounting. Tuxera runs on the NTFS-3G driver, which it makes available for. However, as NTFS-3G is freeware, the updates to this driver come much less frequently than the paid Tuxera version. Tuxera has an advantage over Paragon and Mounty in that it is explicitly compatible with virtual machine software like Parallels Desktop and VMware Fusion that allow you to run Windows on a portion of your hard drive. Also, unlike the previous two “apps”, Tuxera actually comes with an app called Tuxera Disk Manager. It features the ability to reformat drives, buggy repair drives, and create NTFS disk images on the Mac hard drive. Presumably, this is why it comes with the highest price tag of $31, although you can do everything Disk Manager does through Mac’s built-in Disk Utility.
Tuxera boasts “the fastest NTFS file transfer speeds on a Mac” as well as a “smart caching layer” for additional data protection. Although neither of these features are visible to the user, if speed and privacy are priorities for you, Tuxera would likely be a good investment. Download Tuxera here for a free 15-day trial period. Mounty for NTFS. Mounty is a completely free, donations-optional software that’s less than a megabyte large.
Unlike Paragon, it doesn’t install additional drivers to overcome compatibility issues. It’s literally just a few lines of code that instruct the NTFS drive to unmount and remount in the guise of a readable drive. Without Mounty, you would find this difficult to perform by yourself because it requires a deep knowledge of Terminal commands and workarounds. Mounty is so small it isn’t even an app, it just lives as a drop-down menu in the menu bar. When you plug in an NTFS drive, an option to convert it to writable mode appears.
This is the downside of Mounty: it doesn’t work automatically, and you have to wait a while for the drive to remount itself. On all other counts, though, Mounty is simple, efficient and update-free. You can download it for See more:.
Which is NTFS app your favorite? Sound off in the comments below!