If you do not wish to reformat (or can’t) for any reason, you will be able to use macOS terminal to write support for specific Windows disks. Option Three – Enable NTFS Write Support In Terminal This app, like the others on the market, will mount your Windows drives and allow you to read and write as much as you desire. This being said, Paragon offers a great option and even provides a ten-day trial so you can be sure that you like the product before you buy it. There are a number of third-party apps that you will be able to use to write to NTFS. If you have any files on it you wish to keep, move them across to a safe location until we’re done. Note: When you proceed to erase, your drive will be wiped. Once this has finished, select the MS-DOS FAT format under ‘Format’ and rename the drive to a name of your choosing. Click and highlight the disk on the left side of the window, and press erase.

You should now be able to see your disk drive.

Then, go to ‘Disk’ and launch the Disk Utility. Start off by connecting the drive to your Mac and clicking on the Spotlight icon. By reformatting the NTFS drive to FAT32, you will be able to use the drive to be read and written on your Mac, as well as a PC, but it should be noted that FAT32 only supports file sizes up to 4GB. Option 1 – Format to FAT32įirst things first: assuming you already have an NTFS drive, you will be able to use your macOS’ Disk Utility in order to reformat it to FAT32.

This being said, NTFS drives are still compatible with macOS in a way: you are able to open and view whatever you have stored on your external hard drive or USB, but you aren’t able to alter them or copy additional files to the drive.īecause of this, we will now give you a simple step-by-step guide to circumnavigate the problem. In order for Macs to reap the benefits of this, Apple would have to buy a special license, which at the time of writing, they have not done. The NTFS format enables windows users to plug and play with their drives without the need for fiddling around with formatting. Because of this, you will find that many external hard drives and USB sticks will have been formatted to NTFS. However, because Windows computers are more widely used, especially by businesses. For many years there has been a healthy competition between Macs and PCs, with many people favoring one over the other.

Format hard drive to ntfs on mac