The development of NTFS 3g has been stopped from a long time. Instead of tinkering the core system settings via terminal, you can install a free software like NTFs-3g. This is the most popular method, and also the one I am using right now. Also, since there are other solutions, why to take the risk. However, I don’t prefer it, neither it’s recommended by apple (and that’s why it’s hidden) because it’s experimental and people who have tried this, reported an error. Restart your MAC and under finder, go to the “Go -> Go to Folder” and type in /Volumes.

To do that, first type CTRL + o (o for orange) to write data and CTRL + x to exit.

Replace the drive name with the hard drive name. LABEL=DRIVE_NAME none ntfs rw,auto,nobrowse Next, a new window will open, though you won’t see anything on it. You will have to enter the login password.Ĥ. With this command, you are telling the super user to open the fstab file using the nano text editor. In terminal copy paste the following command. Now press cmd + space to launch spotlights then type in terminal and hit enter.ģ. Simply insert your hard drive, in your MAC note down its drive name.Ģ. If you want to enable the support for NTFS, you can easily do it by editing a small file.ġ. Now you may not know, but modern MAC OS support NTFS volume (both read and write) However, this feature is disabled by default. So here are three workarounds, on how to use an NTFS volume with MAC Use NTFS Drive on MAC #1 Terminal Now you can always format your hard drive to FAT32/exFAT and make it compatible on both platforms or even use samba server to share file between MAC and Windows.īut, if you are going to use your external drive mostly on Windows, then it does make sense to keep NTFS and sometimes when you want to use it on MAC, use a software. you can only copy data from external HDD to your MAC but not the other way around. This means you can use them on Windows with no problem.īut on MAC, NTFS volume becomes read only i.e. Since Windows is still the most popular desktop OS, most external HDD comes preformatted with NTFS.

Mac access ntfs external drive