So, the other day, I tried to move some files from my MacBook Pro to an external hard drive formatted in NTFS. I don’t know why but it won’t let me add files. I Get Infoed the disk and noticed that I don’t have Read/Write access and the drive is read-only. I then tried to edit the permissions to give me full access, but apparently, I couldn’t do so as well. What’s wrong with this NTFS external drive? How can I transfer files to it?
By default, you can’t edit an NTFS external hard drive on a Mac. There’s nothing wrong with your NTFS external hard drive. It’s just how it works. NTFS, also known as New Technology File System, is a Windows-proprietary format that’s read-only on Mac.
The best way to read and write to an NTFS external hard drive on a MacBook Pro or any Mac computer is with an NTFS for Mac driver.
I use NTFS disks on my MacBook Air as well and I have great experience with iBoysoft NTFS for Mac. You can also try it out!
If you can’t edit an external hard drive on Mac, try to reformat it with a file system that’s compatible with macOS, such as APFS.