When you shift from Windows to Mac, soon you realize that you can only read NTFS formatted drives but are unable to write them. This means, when you plug an NTFS formatted USB drive you cannot rename the files, edit or modify the files, the only thing you can do is to view the files, you can’t even delete or save any files present in the NTFS formatted drives on your macOS.

If you are one of them who are using Windows 10 PC and Mac at the same time, it is somewhere uneasy to use NTFS drive when you want to transfer the files from Windows and macOS. That’s why many macOS users prefer to use the FAT file system (FAT, FAT32, or exFAT) so that they can transfer and access the files on both Windows and macOS without having any trouble.

Let me tell you that you can enable Mac writing to NTFS format, and there are two ways to do it. “Free” and “Paid”. And that’s what this article is all about, if you were looking for the same, let me tell you that you are on the right post.

What is NTFS? any Advantages?

NTFS stands for New Technology File System, introduced by Microsoft in 1993 as a part of the Windows NT release. This file format was introduced to organize, sort, and finding files on a hard disk efficiently. That’s all with the short and simple NTFS origin, now let’s see some advantages and disadvantages of NTFS.

Advantage of NTFS file system

1. NTFS file system is optimized by providing individual permissions to the files.
2. You can incarease the storage by compressing multiple files.
3. Unlike other file system, NTFS file system has journaling, means you have the options to track the deleted, created, and modified files present on the drive. This will help you a lot when you need to restore any files from the drive.
4. NTFS file system has encryption feature in order to protect the data from unauthorised access.
5. Unline FAT32 file system, NTFS supports larger than 4GB individual files and larger partitions, also corruption rate is low as disk size rises.

And Mac lacks this, so it’s somewhere good to enable NTFS file system writing on Mac also to resolve compatibility issues.

How to Enable Mac Writing to NTFS Format for Free

The method mentioned below is the safe and valid method to enable mac writing to NTFS format for free. Here’s how to do that:

Step 1: Download and install Mounty on your Mac computer.

Step 2: Launch the Mounty app make sure it is running from the menu bar.

Step 3: Now, just connect the NTFS drive to your Mac computer. Mounty will detect and prompt you to re-mount the drive to read/write access via notification. You can also re-mount the drive from the Mounty menu bar icon. Once done, the NTFS drive will appear in the listed app menu.

Step 4: A finder window will open up with an external NTFS drive, now you can be able to move, create, or delete files on the drives.

Furthermore, you can access the drive without any issues by clicking on Show [drive name] in the Finder option. Once you are done with the drive, just visit Mounty for Mac icon located on the menu bar and select “unmount”, and your mounted drive will be successfully unmounted.

How to Enable Mac Writing to NTFS Format (Premium/Paid)

If you have tried enabling Mac writing to NTFS format for free and you are still not satisfied then you can go with the premium method.

Here, we are mentioning Paragon and Tuxera, both the programs are good and totally worth that will help you to read/write NTFS fils system on your Mac computer. If you are one of them who deals with the NTFS file system every now and then, paid method is good for you and the process of reading/write is less time-consuming as it has high-performance NTFS drivers including disk management support.

Here’s how to use them:

1. Download Paragon and Tuxera NTFS accordingly and install it on your Mac computer.
2. Enter the Administrator password when during installation process.
3. Restart your mac.

Once done, your Mac will automatically inherit required read/write drivers so that you can be able to locate drives from Finder and other apps. Furthermore, you can also have control of NTFS driver preferences using the Paragon NTFS or Tuxera System Preferences menu.

Paragon NTFS vs. Tuxera NTFS, which is good?

People reported on forums that the read/write performance of Paragon NTFS is better as compared to Tuxera NTFS, and works like a charm on a solid-state drive. But this doesn’t mean that Tuxera NTFS is not good, in fact, it has better control over the NTFS driver.

Also, let me tell you that both the NTFS programs come with a free trial of a week. So you just have both of them on your system and keep the one that you prefer to have further.

Final Thoughts

If you are planning to enable NTFS writing on Mac, keep in mind that you can also do that with the free method as we have mentioned above, but it lacks the feature such as disk management and you cannot access the files from other apps. If your work is limited and one time then uses the free method, else the premium/paid method is best and will provide all the functions and features that the free method lacks.

That’s it for now, hope this helps! We are glad to know your thoughts in the comment section below. Till then, stay tuned for more info.