Mac no longer reading NTFS formatted external drive

[felicityjc]

Hi

A couple of weeks ago I had to take my 2015 MacBook Pro in to the apple store as it wouldn't turn on (grey folder with the ?), the lady wiped it and reinstalled the operating system (currently running on macOS Mojave version 10.14.6). I have a few external hard drives which I use to store photos on and before I took my Mac in to the Apple store I had no issues with copying photos from my laptop to the hard rives. However, I can now no longer write any files to the hard drives and when I have looked at their properties I see the format on them is NTFS which I have read is not comparable with Macs but before I have used these hard drives with no issues - so I am confused? Any help appreciated. Cheers

 

[CoastalOR]

In order to write to NTFS drives a Mac has to have 3rd party software installed. I think the most popular is Paragon NTFS, but there are others.

 

[fischersd]

Hi

A couple of weeks ago I had to take my 2015 MacBook Pro in to the apple store as it wouldn't turn on (grey folder with the ?), the lady wiped it and reinstalled the operating system (currently running on macOS Mojave version 10.14.6). I have a few external hard drives which I use to store photos on and before I took my Mac in to the Apple store I had no issues with copying photos from my laptop to the hard rives. However, I can now no longer write any files to the hard drives and when I have looked at their properties I see the format on them is NTFS which I have read is not comparable with Macs but before I have used these hard drives with no issues - so I am confused? Any help appreciated. Cheers

What CoastalOR said - you should have previously purchased one (likely Paragon). What most people do these days, however, when they need an external USB drive that they want to use on Windows and Mac systems is they format them with the extended file system. Doesn't require additional software and it's actually compatible with Windows, Linux and MacOS. (something to consider when/if you purchase additional external drives).

And, yes, formatting a drive erases all contents, so you don't want to try converting your existing drives to extended. (not unless you have somewhere to copy all of the files to keep them safe).

 

[felicityjc]

Thank you both. What is strange is that the both worked perfectly fine on my MAC before i recently had to have the laptop wiped, i have been copying photos from my MAC on to them for the last couple of years with no issues - so that is why i am confused as to why they are suddenly not compatible. I will just buy some nee hard drives then that are MAC compatible. Thanks

 

[Apple_Robert]

Thank you both. What is strange is that the both worked perfectly fine on my MAC before i recently had to have the laptop wiped, i have been copying photos from my MAC on to them for the last couple of years with no issues - so that is why i am confused as to why they are suddenly not compatible. I will just buy some nee hard drives then that are MAC compatible. Thanks

You should be able to reformat the external drives you have to Mac Journaled. That will erase any data that is on said drives. Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility > click on your external drive > erase > Make sure the drive is Journal Extended format with GUID partition.

 

[Slartibart]

or you just use the free mounty to access the drives. Besides that, if you don’t need to move data between different machines with different OS, changing the file system to something “native” will facilitate/speed up things.

 

[Longkeg]

What is strange is that the both worked perfectly fine on my MAC before i recently had to have the laptop wiped, i have been copying photos from my MAC on to them for the last couple of years with no issues - so that is why i am confused as to why they are suddenly not compatible.

There's nothing strange about it. You apparently have a Mac on to which someone installed non-Apple or third party software that allowed that Mac to access unsupported (by Apple) file systems. Then you took it to Apple and they wiped the hard drive, which is to say they erased everything. They reinstalled all the Apple software that originally shipped with the computer, leaving it up to you to reinstall any third party software once you got it home. But you didn't. Either you didn't know about it because someone else did the installation or you forgot about it, but without that third party software on board your Mac will not see unsupported file systems.

It's not that your non Apple formatted hard drives were "suddenly not compatible." Technically they never were compatible.

 

[dwig]

There's nothing strange about it. You apparently have a Mac on to which someone installed non-Apple or third party software that allowed that Mac to access unsupported (by Apple) file systems. Then you took it to Apple and they wiped the hard drive, which is to say they erased everything. They reinstalled all the Apple software that originally shipped with the computer, leaving it up to you to reinstall any third party software once you got it home. But you didn't. Either you didn't know about it because someone else did the installation or you forgot about it, but without that third party software on board your Mac will not see unsupported file systems.

It's not that your non Apple formatted hard drives were "suddenly not compatible." Technically they never were compatible.

+1.

If the OP had installed some drive management software that came with one of the externals they may not have realized that part of the function of that software was to provide NTFS write capability. WD and Seagate both frequently include such software as part of the "shovelware" that ships with their drives. The wipe and reinstall of the OS would not have reinstalled this third-party driver software.

 

[justashooter]

There is no need to buy new drives, if you have all the files that are on the external NTFS drives stored elsewhere, just format the drives as HFS+ and copy them back to the drive. If you don't have the files elsewhere, copy them off the drives, reformat the drives as HFS+ and copy them back. OSX will read, but will not write, to NTFS drives.

 

[hobowankenobi]

There is no need to buy new drives, if you have all the files that are on the external NTFS drives stored elsewhere, just format the drives as HFS+ and copy them back to the drive. If you don't have the files elsewhere, copy them off the drives, reformat the drives as HFS+ and copy them back. OSX will read, but will not write, to NTFS drives.

This.

Unless: You need the drives to be cross-platform, and used with a non-Mac. Then HFS+ will cause similar access issues on the non-Mac computers.

 

[Fishrrman]

OP:

Unless you're sharing them with a PC, there's no reason to keep the drives formatted to NTFS.

For "Mac only" use, the drives should be formatted as such:
- If the drive is SSD, format it to APFS with GUID partition format.
- If the drive is a platter-based hard drive, format it to HFS+ (Mac OS Extended with journaling enabled, GUID partition format).

Things will go better this way.