Sometimes when y'all connect an external hard bulldoze to your Mac, you'll notice that it's ready to read only. This happens because the drive is formatted with Microsoft's NTFS filesystem, which macOS doesn't support by default. Fortunately, it'due south piece of cake to fix so that your external hard drive is no longer read only.

There are a number of ways to unlock an external hard bulldoze on a Mac, from reformatting the drive to installing software that allows you lot to write to NTFS volumes. For more advanced users, there are also riskier, more experimental solutions.

Allow'southward go started.

1. If Your Drive Is Blank

If you can't write to an external hard drive on Mac but the bulldoze is blank, you're in luck. You can hands format it to whatever you need and motion on.

To begin, mount the disk on your Mac, then open up Disk Utility. Now select the drive in the sidebar and click Erase.

format external mac drive

The best format option for an external drive depends on what you intend to employ it for:

  • Time Machine backup: If you plan to apply the drive to support your Mac with Fourth dimension Machine, yous'll want to format the drive to APFS for macOS ten.13 or later. Gear up the Scheme to GUID Sectionalisation Map to make the option show upward. On older systems, cull HFS+, which shows up as Mac Bone Extended.
  • Portable drive: If you're looking to create a portable drive to use with your Mac and other operating systems similar Windows, choose exFAT. If you are merely working with Macs, APFS is the preferred option, unless you need to use the bulldoze on a pre-ten.13 system.
  • Working with sometime PCs: This is rare, but if you'll use the disk with an old Windows figurer that doesn't support exFAT, you may take to cull the older FAT option. In most cases, you shouldn't use this as it limits bulldoze sizes to less than 32GB.

2. If Yous Need a Ane-Fourth dimension Fix

Warning! The post-obit steps describe a method of enabling the experimental NTFS support in macOS. There is a very real chance that something could get incorrect, resulting in a loss of data on the target drive. We recommend you do not rely on this method for writing to important volumes or every bit a long-term solution.

Sometimes y'all may demand to write some files to a locked drive merely once, and y'all can do this with built-in Mac tools. Merely while macOS tin read NTFS drives by default, its write capability hides behind a Final hack. Y'all need to follow these instructions for each drive you lot want to write to.

Open Terminal and type:

          nano etc/fstab

Then copy this line into the file, replacing DRIVENAME with the actual name of the drive you want to access:

          LABEL=DRIVENAME none ntfs rw,motorcar,nobrowse

Hit Ctrl + O to save the file, then Ctrl + Ten to quit Nano. At present disconnect and reconnect your drive. Once information technology has remounted, it volition be available in /Volumes.

You can only get at that place in Finder; click Go in the menu bar and select Go to Folder. Enter /Volumes and click Go. You'll see your bulldoze listed here, and you tin can at present copy files onto it.

ntfs drive in finder

3. A Gratis Open-Source Solution

Even if you lot're comfy using Terminal, no 1 wants to edit a preference file every time they deal with a new drive. If you're in IT and deal with Windows drives regularly, you may need a better pick. One of the nearly popular solutions is an open-source product: macFUSE for macOS.

Download macFUSE to go started. The program is a handler; it doesn't comprise anything to mount and read the files themselves. You'll need a couple of extra tools to complete the job, bachelor in a Mac Homebrew package called NTFS-3G.

First, install Homebrew by pasting this line into the Terminal:

          /bin/fustigate -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/Head/install.sh)"

Once you run the commands to install Homebrew, and you get a confirmation in Terminal, y'all need to install the NTFS-3G package. That is another single command:

          mash install ntfs-3g

Sometimes Concluding doesn't recognize that you accept already installed the macFUSE bundle. If that happens, run this command too:

          mash install --cask macfuse

You'll and so be prompted to reboot your Mac. Once you've done that, endeavour re-running the NTFS-3G command.

How to Write to an NTFS Drive With NTFS-3G

NTFS-3G enables your Mac to write to NTFS drives, but it is not automated. You need to run a few extra commands to go information technology working.

First, find the accost of your mounted read-only drive. You lot can get this in the Concluding using the command:

          diskutil list

You need to run the following commands each time that you want to mount a drive with write permissions. Supervene upon /dev/disk1s1 with the drive address that you lot institute higher up:

          sudo mkdir /Volumes/NTFS

Then:

          sudo /usr/local/bin/ntfs-3g /dev/disk1s1 /Volumes/NTFS -o local -o allow_other -o auto_xattr -o auto_cache

If y'all don't want to run these commands each time, there'due south a fix. You lot can boot your Mac into single-user manner and replace the built-in Mac NTFS tools with NTFS-3G. At that place are some warnings about security on the projection site; you can check out the steps to enable it on the programmer's GitHub page.

The devs make it articulate that this opens upward your Mac to potential exploitation, so this step is not for the faint of heart.

4. A Simple, Paid Option

The solutions we've described above are pretty technical. If you lot'd rather just click your mouse a few times to get this working, yous can apply a paid third-party app to simplify the entire process.

There are some unlike choices, but the longtime favorite is Paragon Software's NTFS for Mac. It costs $19.95 per Mac license, though you go a disbelieve for buying a second or 3rd license at the same time. You can examination drive the software with a x-day trial too, and it'south fully compatible with Apple tree silicon.

ntfs for mac paragon software

It'southward a simple install, which then provides a menu bar item that shows your NTFS drives. Better still, your NTFS drives now show up in Finder unremarkably, and you lot can treat them like any other bulldoze.

Download: Microsoft NTFS for Mac past Paragon Software ($19.95)

Tuxera NTFS for Mac is another program that's worth looking at. It'south congenital on top of the open standard we used above, NTFS-3G. The licensing is a bit simpler, as you lot pay $15 to apply it on iii Macs at the same time.

With a 15-day gratuitous trial, you can put the program through its paces before shelling out any money. Rather than a menu bar item, Tuxera installs every bit a preference pane. Y'all can format drives from in that location, but not much else. Like Paragon, you can use Finder to work with the drive.

Download: Microsoft NTFS for Mac by Tuxera ($fifteen for three computers)

Solve Other Mac External Bulldoze Issues

Both paid options offer a painless way to mountain an NTFS read-but bulldoze on your Mac and make it writable. The open-source and Terminal options are more than work, and you shouldn't rely on experimental support full-time. You lot tin also write as much data every bit yous demand to and from your drives while trialing both paid options.

Merely having a read-only bulldoze is not the just external deejay problem y'all can confront on a Mac. Sometimes yous can mount an external bulldoze and it isn't even recognized. Take a wait at our guide on how to go your external bulldoze to testify up on a Mac for tips on how to solve that issue.

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Nearly The Author

Andy Betts (216 Manufactures Published)

Andy is a freelance writer and junior editor for Android at MUO. He'due south been writing virtually consumer tech since the early on 2000s for a broad range of publications, and has a passion for all things mobile.

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