Key Takeaways

  • Formatting your external hard drive is a simple solution to make it no longer read-only. Choose the appropriate format based on your needs, such as APFS for Time Machine backup or exFAT for cross-platform use.
  • Paid third-party apps like Paragon Software's NTFS for Mac and Tuxera NTFS for Mac provide an easy and user-friendly way to access and write to NTFS drives on macOS.
  • If you're willing to take the risk, there are experimental methods to enable NTFS write support using Terminal commands or open-source solutions like macFUSE and NTFS-3G. However, these methods may have limitations and security risks.

Sometimes when you connect an external hard drive or SSD to your Mac, you'll find that it's set to read-only. This happens because the drive is formatted with Microsoft's NTFS file system, which macOS doesn't fully support by default. Fortunately, it's easy to fix so that your external hard drive is no longer read-only.

There are several ways to unlock an external hard drive on a Mac, from reformatting the drive to installing software that allows you to write to NTFS volumes. For more advanced users, there are also riskier, more experimental solutions. Let's get started.

Support for reading NTFS drives was introduced to macOS in version 10.15, Catalina. You can't move files to an NTFS drive, or edit the ones on it, but if you just need to copy files to your local drive, you can.

1. If Your Drive Is Blank

If you can't write to an external hard drive on Mac but the drive is blank—or you don't need any of the data stored on it—you're in luck. You can just format it to whatever you need and move on.

To begin, mount the disk on your Mac, then open 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 use it for:

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

2. Simple, Paid Options

For full access to read-only NTFS drives on macOS, there are some free solutions that we'll outline later. But they are very technical. If you'd rather just click your mouse a few times to get this working, you can use 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. It costs $19.95 per Mac license, though you get a discount for buying a second or third license at the same time. You can test drive the software with a 10-day trial too, and it's fully compatible with Apple Silicon.

ntfs for mac paragon software

It's 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 normally, and you can treat them like any other drive.

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

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

With a free trial, you can put the program through its paces before shelling out any money. Rather than a menu bar item, Tuxera installs as a preference pane. You can format drives from there, but not much else. Like Paragon, you can use Finder to work with the drive.

Download: Microsoft NTFS for Mac by Tuxera ($15 for three computers)

3. An Experimental Free Solution for a One-Time Fix

The following steps describe a method of enabling the experimental NTFS support in macOS. There is a very real chance that something could go wrong, 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 as a long-term solution.

Sometimes you may need to write some files to a locked drive only once, and you can do this for free with built-in Mac tools. While macOS can read NTFS drives by default, its write capability hides behind a Terminal hack. You need to follow these instructions for each drive you 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,auto,nobrowse
    

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

You can only get there in Finder; click Go in the menu bar and select Go to Folder. Enter /Volumes and click Go. You'll see your drive listed here, and you can now copy files onto it.

ntfs drive in finder

4. A Free Open-Source Fix to Write to NTFS Drives

Even if you're comfortable using Terminal, no one 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 option. One of the most popular solutions is an open-source product: 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. You'll need an extra tool to complete the job, available in a Mac Homebrew package called NTFS-3G.

This method is based on the same tool, NTFS-3G, used by the paid app Tuxera, above. This method is free to use, but it's a much more hands-on setup so isn't for everyone.

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

        /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 another single command:

            brew install ntfs-3g
    

Sometimes Terminal doesn't recognize that you have already installed the macFUSE package. If that happens, run this command as well:

            brew install --cask macfuse
    

You'll then be prompted to reboot your Mac. Once you've done that, try 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 automatic. You need to run a few extra commands to get it working.

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

            diskutil list
    

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

            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 you don't want to run these commands each time, there's a fix. You can boot your Mac into single-user mode and replace the built-in Mac NTFS tools with NTFS-3G.

There are some warnings about security on the project site; you can check out the steps to enable it on the developer's GitHub page. A full list of limitations is there, too, which vary depending on what version of the OS you're using.

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

Solve the macOS NTFS Read-Only Problem

Both paid options offer a painless way to mount an NTFS read-only drive on your Mac and make it writable. The open-source and Terminal options are a lot more work, and you shouldn't rely on experimental support full-time. You can also write as much data as you need to and from your drives while trialing both paid options.

Generally speaking, as long as the drive shows up, you should be able to get it to a point where you can write to it. If the drive doesn't appear at all, even in read-only mode, you'll need a different approach to get it working.