copying an ntfs hard drive

Question

copying an ntfs hard drive

I have a WD external hard drive formatted in NTFS and now I am buying my first MacBook. If I buy a new Mac-approved hard drive and copy all my old files to the new hard drive using my PC, will I be able to both read and write on my new MacBook? What if I used the MacBook to copy the two hard drives? Or I buy a new USB drive to use for it?

Best Answered by

Sherry Song

Answered on Tuesday, August 5, 2025

Hello, happy to solve your problem. Here are my suggestions:

( 1 ) Use your WD NTFS drive on Mac with an NTFS for Mac tool.

Mac cannot natively write to NTFS, but it can read while Windows can neither read nor write to HFS+, natively. So you are suggested to use a reliable NTFS driver for Mac like iBoysoft NTFS for Mac, which can directly read and write your drive both on PC and MacBook.

Download

iBoysoft NTFS for Mac

Rating:4.8

( 2 )Format your NFTS drive on PC/Mac. You'd better format the drive to FAT32 or exFAT on Windows, because Mac may show formatting is not supported by ntfs error when formatting.

( 3 )Buy the new drive for exFAT or FAT32.

Hope you will succeed in using the right drive for both Mac and Windows.

Also read: What's the Best Format for Both Mac and PC?

How to Read and Write NTFS Drives on Mac?