Sometimes when you connect an external hard drive to your Mac, you'll find that information technology'south fix to read-only. This happens because the drive is formatted with Microsoft's NTFS filesystem, which macOS doesn't support by default. Fortunately, information technology'south easy to fix so that your external hard drive is no longer read-but.

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

Permit's go started.

1. If Your Drive Is Blank

If you can't write to an external difficult drive on Mac but the drive is blank—or you don't need any of the information stored on information technology—you're in luck. You tin just format information technology to any y'all need and move on.

To brainstorm, mount the disk on your Mac, then open Disk Utility. At present select the drive in the sidebar and click Erase.

format external mac drive

The all-time format choice for an external drive depends on what y'all intend to use it for:

  • Fourth dimension Machine backup: If you plan to use the bulldoze to support your Mac with Time Machine, you lot'll want to format the drive to APFS for macOS 10.13 or afterward. Prepare the Scheme to GUID Partition Map to make the choice show up. On older systems, choose HFS+, which shows up as Mac Os Extended.
  • Portable bulldoze: If you're looking to create a portable drive to utilise with your Mac and other operating systems like Windows, cull exFAT. If you are only working with Macs, APFS is the preferred option, unless you demand to use the drive on a pre-10.13 system.
  • Working with former PCs: This is rare, but if y'all'll use the disk with an old Windows computer that doesn't support exFAT, you may have to cull the older FAT pick. In most cases, you shouldn't use this as it limits drive sizes to less than 32GB.

2. If You Demand a Ane-Time Fix

The post-obit steps depict a method of enabling the experimental NTFS back up in macOS. There is a very real adventure that something could become wrong, resulting in a loss of data on the target drive. We recommend you do not rely on this method for writing to of import volumes or as a long-term solution.

Sometimes you may need to write some files to a locked drive just once, and you tin can do this with built-in Mac tools. Merely while macOS tin can read NTFS drives past default, its write adequacy hides behind a Terminal hack. Yous need to follow these instructions for each drive you want to write to.

Open Terminal and type:

          nano etc/fstab

And then copy this line into the file, replacing DRIVENAME with the actual name of the bulldoze you want to access:

          LABEL=DRIVENAME none ntfs rw,automobile,nobrowse

Hit Ctrl + O to relieve the file, then Ctrl + X to quit Nano. Now disconnect and reconnect your drive. Once information technology has remounted, it will exist available in /Volumes.

You lot tin can only go there in Finder; click Go in the card bar and select Go to Binder. Enter /Volumes and click Get. You'll see your drive listed here, and you can now copy files onto information technology.

ntfs drive in finder

3. A Free Open-Source Solution

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

Download macFUSE to get started. The program is a handler; it doesn't contain anything to mount and read the files themselves. Y'all'll need a couple of extra tools to complete the job, available in a Mac Homebrew package chosen NTFS-3G.

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

          /bin/bash -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, you need to install the NTFS-3G package. That is some other single command:

          brew            install            ntfs-3g

Sometimes Terminal doesn't recognize that you have already installed the macFUSE bundle. If that happens, run this control too:

          brew            install            --cask macfuse

You'll then be prompted to reboot your Mac. One time you've done that, try re-running the NTFS-3G command.

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

NTFS-3G enables your Mac to write to NTFS drives, only it is non automatic. You need to run a few actress commands to get information technology working.

First, find the accost of your mounted read-merely drive. Yous tin go this in the Terminal using the command:

          diskutil            list

Yous need to run the following commands each time that you want to mount a bulldoze with write permissions. Replace /dev/disk1s1 with the drive address that you found above:

          sudo mkdir /Volumes/NTFS

And then:

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

If you don't want to run these commands each time, in that location's a fix. You can boot your Mac into single-user mode and replace the built-in Mac NTFS tools with NTFS-3G. In that location are some warnings nearly security on the project site; you lot tin can bank check out the steps to enable it on the developer's GitHub folio.

The devs brand it clear that this opens upwardly your Mac to potential exploitation, so this step is not for the faint of centre.

4. A Unproblematic, Paid Choice

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

There are some different choices, but the longtime favorite is Paragon Software's NTFS for Mac. Information technology costs $19.95 per Mac license, though y'all get a discount for buying a second or third license at the same fourth dimension. You can exam drive the software with a x-day trial too, and information technology's fully compatible with Apple silicon.

ntfs for mac paragon software

It's a uncomplicated install, which then provides a carte du jour bar item that shows your NTFS drives. Meliorate nonetheless, your NTFS drives now show up in Finder ordinarily, and yous can treat them similar whatever other drive.

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

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

With a 15-solar day free trial, you can put the program through its paces earlier shelling out any money. Rather than a menu bar item, Tuxera installs as a preference pane. You tin can format drives from there, only non much else. Like Paragon, you can use Finder to work with the drive.

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

Solve Other Mac External Drive Problems

Both paid options offering a painless way to mount an NTFS read-only drive on your Mac and brand it writable. The open up-source and Terminal options are more work, and you shouldn't rely on experimental back up total-time. You can also write equally much data as you demand to and from your drives while trialing both paid options.

Simply having a read-simply drive is not the just external disk problem you can confront on a Mac. Sometimes you can mount an external drive and it isn't fifty-fifty recognized. Take a await at our guide on how to get your external bulldoze to show upwardly on a Mac for tips on how to solve that outcome.

External Difficult Drive Non Showing Up on Mac? Here's How to Set Information technology

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Virtually The Author

Andy Betts (216 Manufactures Published)

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

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