1. Connect the Seagate external “for Mac” drive to the Windows computer. The drive must be connected to the computer during installation or the install will not complete. Step 2 Download the file HFS4WIN.exe to your Windows computer.
  2. Sep 06, 2019 Check the boxes ‘Hard Disks’ and ‘External Disks’. Finder Preferences pick to Show External Drive. Now you open up a piece of software on your Mac called Disk Utility. You’ll use Disk Utility to format your WD My Passport drive. You find Disk Utility in the Applications folder on your Mac. Applications Folder In Dock.

Reading PC-formatted hard drives using your Mac is easy enough. Just plug in the drive, then access the files you need to use. But writing to that drive? Well, that's a little more complicated. This is due to the fact that NTFS, the file system utilized by Windows PCs, has limited support on Mac. While you can read files from these drives just fine, if you need to write to a PC-formatted hard drive, you'll need some third-party software to get the job done.

Here are the tools you can use to work with NTFS-formatted drives on your Mac.

To use HFS Explorer, connect your Mac-formatted drive to your PC and go to File Load File System From Device. The software will automatically locate and load the connected drive for you. You’ll then begin seeing the contents of the HFS+ drive in a new graphical window. To copy any folders of file, select them and click the Extract button. Transferring Data From a Mac to PC via an External Hard Drive. Mac OS X and Windows can both read and write to disks in the FAT or ExFat format. Because Mac OS X Mountain Lion does not natively support writing to an external NTFS drive, you must erase your hard disk and format it. Be sure to double-check this — you could accidentally wipe the wrong drive if you select the wrong disk here. Type select disk # and press Enter to select the Mac disk, replacing # with the number of the Mac disk. For example, here we’d type select disk 2. Finally, type clean and press Enter. This command erases the entire selected disk, including all its files and partitions — whether.

Microsoft NTFS for Mac

What many consider to be the go-to for writing to NTFS drives on a Mac, Microsoft NTFS comes from developer Paragon Software. It gives you complete control over how your Mac interacts with NTFS-formatted drives, letting you edit, copy, and delete files from them as though your machine had native support. The app also lets you choose how NTFS drives mount when attached to your Mac. You can choose to mount in read-only mode if you don't want to accidentally modify files but you still need access to them, or you can even choose not to mount automatically.

Microsoft NTFS for Mac is available directly from Paragon Software for $19.95 after a 10-day free trial.

Software

Tuxera NTFS for Mac

Like Microsoft NTFS, Tuxera's app lets you edit, copy, and delete files on NTFS drive on your Mac. Tuxera NTFS uses smart caching technology to speed up transfers, maintaining a sustained speed as files are moved between your external drive and your Mac. It also features failsafe technology designed to protect against unexpected power loss or an unexpected unplugging of your drive, both of which could cause data loss or even damage the drive. Tuxera also includes support for NTFS extended attributes and works with virtualization software like Parallels and VMware Fusion.

Mac apps that make the most money. Tuxera NTFS is available from Tuxera for $31 after a 15-day free trial.

Other tools

While Paragon and Tuxera provide paid tools that integrate themselves with your Mac and do all of the necessary setup during the installation process, there are free tools that you can install, but they take some work. Fuse for macOS, for instance, requires that you use the Terminal. You'll also need to install NTFS-3G, which allows you to manually mount and write to NTFS drives. The problem is that installing NTFS-3G is a major security risk by the project's own admission, as the mount tool runs with root permissions, leaving your system exposed to possible attack. This method can't really be recommended, but it is possible.

Questions?

If you've got any questions about working with NTFS drives on your Mac, let us know in the comments.

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