Home > Questions

How to Copy Files To A Windows NTFS-formatted Drive?

Good afternoon. I'm getting a MediaGate MG-35 to store music, videos, and photos on. When I get it, I'll be installing a 300GB HDD and formatting it in NTFS. When I plug this into my Mac mini through a USB port, I assume that it will be recognized and show a removable drive on the desktop. Should I then be able to just drag and drop my video files (.mp4, etc.) and photos (.jpg), and music (.mp3) to the drive without a problem or any (known) data corruption? Thanks for the help.

Best Answered by

iBoysoft author Eudora Liu

Eudora Liu

Answered on Wednesday, November 26, 2025

Actually, you are not allowed to copy files from Mac to an NTFS formatted drive. Mac only supports you to read an NTFS drive but write on it. You need to use an NTFS reader for help.

iBoysoft NTFS for Mac allows you to view and copy files from an NTFS-formatted external drive on Mac. It is also an NTFS writer that enables NTFS to write support on Mac. With it, you will have full read and write control over the Windows NTFS file system in a macOS environment without formatting it with a Mac-compatible file system.

Following the below steps to mount your NTFS drive in read-write mode on your Mac.

Step 1: Free download, install, and launch iBoysoft NTFS for Mac.

Step 2: Connect your external hard drive to your Mac.

Step 3: Wait for it to mount successfully.

Step 4: Download the iBoysoft NTFS driver and enable System Extensions to gain full disk access if required.

After that, you can copy files from your Mac to an NTFS-formatted drive.

Instead of that, you can also format your external hard drive with a Mac-compatible file system so that you can access the NTFS drive and copy files to it.

People Also Ask

Read More Questions

Read More Advice From iBoysoft's Computer Experts

Fix Mac error code 100006

11 Ways to Fix Error Code 100006 on Mac with External drive

Here, we explain what 'The operation can't be completed because an unexpected error occurred (error code 100006)' is, what may cause error 100006, and 11 ways to fix it.

Context menu on Mac

Access & Customize Context Menu (Right-click Menu) on Mac

This post explains what macOS context menu is and how to access and customize the right-click menu on Mac. You'll also learn how to expand the functions of the context menu.