#Macbook external hard drive read only how to#
#Macbook external hard drive read only for mac os#
#Macbook external hard drive read only install#
#Macbook external hard drive read only drivers#

Just look for the partition with the Windows_NTFS file system. You can then identify the device name of the NTFS partition.

When you connect an NTFS drive to the computer, run the following command to list any disk partitions: diskutil list You can now manually mount NTFS partitions in read/write mode. From a terminal window, run the following command to create a mount point at /Volumes/NTFS.

#Macbook external hard drive read only install#

Once you’ve installed the developer tools and Homebrew, run the following command in a Terminal window to install ntfs-3g: brew install ntfs-3g The script will automatically download and install Homebrew. Press Enter and provide your password when prompted.

#Macbook external hard drive read only for mac os#

Homebrew is a “package manager” for Mac OS X. Copy-paste the following command into a Terminal window and press Enter to install it: /usr/bin/ruby -e '$(curl -fsSL )' In addtion, you’ll need to download and install homebrew if you haven’t already installed it on your Mac. If you haven’t installed them yet, you can open a Terminal window from Finder > Applications > Utilities and run the following command to do so: xcode-select -installĬlick “Install” when you’re prompted to install the tools. You’ll also need Apple’s command line developer tools installed to continue.

#Macbook external hard drive read only how to#

RELATED: How to Install Packages with Homebrew for OS X Use the default options when installing it. This is more secure, but it’s more work.įirst, download FUSE for macOS and install it. However, you can use FUSE to mount NTFS partitions in read-write mode manually if you don’t mind using the Terminal. To make your Mac automatically mount NTFS partitions in read-write mode, you’ll have to temporarily disable System Integrity Protection and replace one of Apple’s built-in tools with a binary that is more vulnerable to attack. So this method is a security risk. This method is free, but it requires a good bit of work, and is less secure. The Best Free Third-Party Drivers: FUSE for macOS But Paragon NTFS does the same thing and is cheaper. You could also purchase Tuxera NTFS for Mac, which costs $31 and offers a fourteen-day free trial. If you own a Seagate drive, be aware that Seagate offers a free download of Paragon NTFS for Mac so you won’t have to purchase anything extra. If you need this feature, paying for software that does it properly is worth it.

#Macbook external hard drive read only drivers#

You also won’t have to fiddle with terminal commands to manually mount partitions, insecurely mount partitions automatically, or deal with potential corruption as you will with the free drivers below. It really does “just work”, so it’s the best option if you’re willing to pay a small amount of money for this feature. It’ll install cleanly and easily on modern versions of macOS, including macOS 10.12 Sierra and Mac OS X 10.11 El Capitan. Paragon NTFS for Mac costs $19.95 and offers a ten-day free trial. The Best Paid Third-Party Driver: Paragon NTFS for Mac We highly recommend paying for a third-party NTFS driver if you need to do this as the other solutions don’t work as well and are more work to set up. In fact, we’ve had it corrupt data before. It isn’t guaranteed to work properly and could potentially cause problems with your NTFS file system. However, it’s off by default and requires some messing around in the terminal to enable it.

Apple’s Experimental NTFS-Write Support: The macOS operating system includes experimental support for writing to NTFS drives.

It’s slower than paid solutions and automatically mounting NTFS partitions in read-write mode is a security risk. Unfortunately, this take a bit of extra work to install, especially on Macs with the new System Integrity Protection feature, added in 10.11 El Capitan.

Free Third-Party Drivers: There’s a free and open-source NTFS driver you can install on a Mac to enable write support.

These are paid solutions, but they’re easy to install and should offer better performance than the free solutions below.

Paid Third-Party Drivers: There are third-party NTFS drivers for Mac that you can install, and they’ll work quite well.

There are several options for this, and you’ll need to choose one: RELATED: What's the Difference Between FAT32, exFAT, and NTFS?