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[Fixed] Can't Write to the External Hard Drive. I Have an NTFS Driver.

I have a MacBook Pro running and an external hard drive that is NTFS which I can read but can't write to. I already have the Paragon NTFS driver installed and I use my other NTFS hard drives with no problems. In the "Get Info" pane under permissions it says I can "only read", but in the Disk Utility under "write status" it says I can read/write. I tried to verify and repair the disk in Disk Utility and both were completed normally with no errors detected. Does anybody have any ideas on how to deal with this? I would rather not reformat the disk as it has roughly over 500GB of work that i have no other place to store temporarily.

Best Answered by

iBoysoft author Sherry Song

Sherry Song

Answered on Tuesday, August 5, 2025

Hello, after knowing your problem. Here you have to know that the NTFS file system can't be written on Mac.

And there may be some configuration problems using the Paragon NTFS driver for Mac according to many technological debates.

For that you said you don't want to reformat it, you'd better uninstall this NTFS driver and choose a more appropriate one like iBoysoft NTFS for Mac, which can work better for writing and reading the NTFS drive seamlessly on Mac.

Then you can also try these ways: 

  1. Enable Ignore ownership on this volume.
  2. Check the free space of the external drive.
  3. Restart the Mac and reconnect the drive with the Mac.

To avoid data loss, you're suggested to utilize iBoysoft NTFS for Mac.

Also read: Can't Save/Write to External Hard Drive on Mac 

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