writing to a windows-formatted external drive

[wfriedwald]

I have an external hard drive full of files from a PC / Windows-using friend.

I can access the drive in terms of reading it - it's read-only - but I can't write to it or add anything to it.

Is there any way I can change the permissions and access to this drive to make it writea-able?

thanks!

W

PS: I sometimes use a little app called BATCHMODE for this purpose, but I can't get it to do anything for this drive ... thanks!

 

[winxmac]

Only Windows will be able to write in an NTFS-formatted drive... It will be read-only to macOS and all Linux distributions unless they have the 3rd party NTFS driver...

Only once the drive is formatted using FAT32 [MS-DOS] or exFAT will you be able to write on it using macOS...

However, you said that the drive is full of files so if you need those and you have enough storage on your internal drive or on another external drive, copy and save those files first, then run Disk Utility to format the drive as FAT32 [MS-DOS] or exFAT and copy and save the files back to the external drive...

 

[wfriedwald]

OOOH ... that is NOT the answer I was hoping for!

It's over 2TB worth of material, it will take days to copy all that. But I guess that's what has to be done!

(Unless someone else has another suggestion! oh no!)

thanks very much for the feedback - at least I know where I stand.

w

 

[Adora]

Hi,

You could try one of those NTFS drivers. The first one seems to be free. It was icluded in my Setapp subscription too. So I think it's trustable. But seems to be new.

Paragon is already there for many years. I used it in the past. I think Tuxera is also known for a long time.

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[AndyMacAndMic]

I have an external hard drive full of files from a PC / Windows-using friend.

I can access the drive in terms of reading it - it's read-only - but I can't write to it or add anything to it.

Is there any way I can change the permissions and access to this drive to make it writea-able?

thanks!

W

PS: I sometimes use a little app called BATCHMODE for this purpose, but I can't get it to do anything for this drive ... thanks!

First check that your external drive indeed is NTFS formatted or that there maybe is another problem why it is locked.

I do not quite agree with the answer @winxmac gave in post #2, because reformatting the drive is (IMO) a last resort (very) rigorous solution, which can be avoided with third party software.

Most of that software is not free and a lot of it now is subscription-based (you can take a subscription for one month).

Here are some links. Maybe someone else can chime in who has experience with this software:

https://toolbox.easeus.com/ntfs-mac-tips/free-ntfs-on-mac.html

https://www.kingshiper.com/ntfs-for-mac

https://iboysoft.com/ntfs-for-mac/free-ntfs-for-mac.html

As said, I have no experience with them so use at your own risk

Edit: I see that @Adora beat me to it.

 

[Slartibart]

Well, you can enable write support in Apple’s NTFS driver for that specific drive.

• Connect the NTFS formatted drive to your Mac and open Finder and locate the drive in the sidebar
• Open Terminal from Applications > Utilities. Then type the following command and press Enter:

sudo nano /etc/fstab​

• Enter your administrator password when prompted. Now, add the following line at the end of the file:

LABEL=DRIVE_LABEL none ntfs rw,auto,nobrowse
​

• Please replace »DRIVE_LABEL« with the actual name of your NTFS drive
• Press Control + O to save the file, then press Control + X to exit the nano editor

To create a shortcut in the Finder

• Go back to Terminal and type the following command:

sudo ln -s /Volumes/DRIVE_LABEL ~/Desktop/SHORTCUT_NAME​

Similar to before, make sure to replace »DRIVE_LABEL« with the name of the NTFS drive and »SHORTCUT_NAME«with the desired name for the shortcut on your desktop.

From here on out you are able to write to the NTFS-formatted drive. Personally I would probably exclude any spinning NTFS drive from Spotlight indexing - you can acchieve that for example by placing a file named .metadata_never_index in its root folder.

 

[wfriedwald]

thank you!

Just to clarify:

LABEL=DRIVE_LABEL none ntfs rw,auto,nobrowse

The NTFS drive is titled "New Volume"

so my command would be :

LABEL=NEW_VOLUME none ntfs rw,auto,nobrowse

thanks again - it's worth a try!

w

 

[Slartibart]

thank you!

Just to clarify:

LABEL=DRIVE_LABEL none ntfs rw,auto,nobrowse

The NTFS drive is titled "New Volume"

so my command would be :

LABEL=NEW_VOLUME none ntfs rw,auto,nobrowse

thanks again - it's worth a try!

w

LABEL="New Volume" none ntfs raw, auto, no browse

any drive or folder name which has spaces in its name has to be put in "-quotes. Same when creating an alias using the ln-command or using it with another terminal command.

nota bene: at this level things become much easier when there are no spaces in names… 🙃🤪🤓

 

[wfriedwald]

oooh thanks ... I tried it, and I must have done something wrong.
it asked me to save the file (I named it "slartibart") and it generated a text file with the single line

LABEL="New Volume" none ntfs raw, auto, no browse

but I still can't write to the drive - my bad, I have no doubt!

w

------

there's no much info in the transcript, but here it is:


Last login: Wed Jul 3 08:50:29 on console


willfriedwald@Wills-MacBook-Air ~ % sudo nano /etc/fstab<200b>





Password:


willfriedwald@Wills-MacBook-Air ~ %

 

[Nermal]

Please post the output of cat /etc/fstab so we can double-check it.

 

[wfriedwald]

thanks again - although I don't think this is very helpful:


-----

Last login: Wed Jul 3 16:28:11 on ttys000

willfriedwald@Wills-MacBook-Air ~ % cat /etc/fstab

cat: /etc/fstab: No such file or directory

willfriedwald@Wills-MacBook-Air ~ %

-----

thanks again!

w

 

[DeltaMac]

If you can't get the native tool working, the software from Paragon or Tuxera are known good (from Adora's above post #4.) There's a free version, which is a bit slow, but works, or the paid version gives you (mostly) good write speed on your NTFS drive from your Mac.

 

[wfriedwald]

thanks again! I'm going to try one of those alternatives as soon as I return from the July 4 holiday weekend. Yes!

 

[gilby101]

I'm going to try one of those alternatives as soon as I return from the July 4 holiday weekend

Good idea. Modifying `fstab` is not supported by Apple and relies on macOS code which is also not supported. Paragon and Tuxera are the long established products which perform reasonably well.