We work with external NTFS hard drives in OS X. Full work with NTFS on Mac OS X Mac os does not write to ntfs

I am sure that almost all Mac owners have encountered the problem of writing files to a drive formatted in NTFS. If everything is in order with reading information from such media, then for writing you have to turn to third-party utilities.

You can, of course, enable recording support in the standard driver for OS X by editing the fstab file, but if you don’t want to get hard drive“empty box”, then it’s better not to do this.

Before we look at the most popular NTFS drivers on Mac OS X, I want to immediately warn you that each of them wins in some ways and loses in others. There are several important criteria that should be adhered to:

1. Reliability;

2. Recording speed;

3. Cost.

Keep in mind, there is no perfect driver. Even the most expensive and widespread product will not meet all these criteria. So choose based on what is most important to you.

SLNTFS

A simple, free utility. The program has a minimum of settings, so despite the lack of Russian, not knowing English is not particularly embarrassing. The disadvantages include the need to manually enable recording every time you connect the drive, since by default the utility only has read mode enabled.

NTFS - 3G

Another free, reliable program with the ability to write files by default, which makes it more practical. Also, in the utility settings, you can open only the necessary sections for recording, thereby protecting yourself from losing all information. The disadvantages of NTFS-3G, as stated by the developers themselves, include the recording speed, since during development more attention was paid to stability. But if the speed performance of the driver is important to you, then the authors have worked hard especially for you and created a paid version called Tuxera for Mac.

Tuxera NTFS for Mac

The program differs from its free counterpart in its high recording speed. At the same time, the interface and settings have remained virtually unchanged. So you pay 25 euros only for the speed increase. I should note that some users say that they didn’t see much of an increase in speed, so before you buy, I recommend making sure that the game is worth the candle (I haven’t checked it myself, it’s a toad to pay 25 euros :)).

Paragon NTFS

A more serious utility for working with NTFS. It is very popular among poppy growers due to its stable operation and wide capabilities, namely:

1. Russification (although I don’t see much sense in it);

2. File compression;

3. It is even possible to create boot disk.

Conclusion: I think you are convinced that you can work with NTFS on Mac OS X without any problems, you just need to decide which criteria are of higher priority for you and download the appropriate utility. And as a conclusion, let me remind you that you should not work too actively with media with NTFS, writing / reading files is as much as you like, but let’s say downloading torrents to such media from under Mac is better not worth it. And of course, don’t forget about regular backups.

P.S. You can read about other common problems faced by poppy growers in the article

Any user of the OS X operating system sooner or later is faced with the need to write something to a drive with the NTFS file system. This could be an external drive or a partition with Windows installed along with macOS. The result will be predictable: Apple computers perfectly read information from these media, but are helpless when it is necessary to write something down. However, this problem is quite simple to solve.

The NTFS file system was developed by Microsoft for the family operating systems Windows NT was supposed to replace the “old lady” FAT. Moreover, the morally and actually outdated file system is still alive today, and OS X works great with it. Difficulties for the Apple operating system arise exclusively when encountering NTFS. There are several solutions:

• use “Terminal” to activate NTFS recording for each individual drive;
• install a free driver that adds NTFS writing support to OS X;
• use paid solutions from Tuxera or Paragon.

In general, all solutions have the right to life and are arranged from the most complex to the simplest. You can actually manually enable write support for each individual NTFS drive. This method is the least practical and will require at least minimal skills in working with the Terminal. For this reason we will omit it.

Instead, let's look at much more comprehensive and universal solutions that can solve our problem once and for all. Let's start with free driver called NTFS-3G. Let's make a disclaimer right away: it works unstable with the latest version of OS X - El Capitan. Therefore, you should not expect that support will appear in the fall macOS Sierra. NTFS-3G is suitable for users who use OS X 10.10 or older Apple operating systems.

You can download the NTFS-3G driver. We also need MacFUSE.

After downloading everything you need, install MacFUSE, and then NTFS-3G. When installing the latter, you will need to specify the caching method: select No caching. After installation, you need to restart your computer.

NTFS-3G settings will be available in system settings. It's better not to change anything here. Note that you can uninstall the driver from here. That's it, NTFS support is implemented.

Now let's look at paid solutions. There are two of them: Tuxera NTFS and Paragon NTFS.

Tuxera NTFS can be downloaded from the official website of the developer. A trial version is available for 15 days. Price full version is $31. A reboot will be required after installation, and the settings are also available in System Settings. In general, the solution from Tuxera will work immediately after installation and restart of the system, additional settings not required.

The analogue and main competitor of Tuxera NTFS is Paragon NTFS. This popular driver will cost a little less (990 rubles), but the validity period trial version less by 5 days. You can download Paragon NTFS. The installation process is very simple, do not forget to restart the computer. You can access driver parameters in a similar way, only their number is significantly smaller than that of a competitor. On the other hand, the average user does not care about this.

The most interesting thing awaits at the testing stage: Paragon NTFS turns out to be slightly faster than Tuxera NTFS. In addition, both paid solutions put NTFS-3G on both blades. Thus, choosing a solution for writing to partitions with the NTFS file system should be based on your needs.

If you work with such drives very rarely, then there is no point in purchasing drivers from Paragon or Tuxera, because the writing speed will probably not be critical.

If you have to work with NTFS partitions on a regular basis, then you should look towards paid solutions. At the same time, Paragon NTFS is cheaper, but has less configuration flexibility. Tuxera NTFS is a little more expensive, but has a large number of changeable parameters. In addition, Paragon's solution has a higher write speed.

Sometimes you have to communicate with “parallel worlds”; this time I had to transfer a large file (12GB) to an external drive marked in NTFS. As all BD-RIP video lovers know, FAT32 cannot work with files larger than 4GB.

Once upon a time, when I myself was reborn from a Win user to a Mac user, I already went through something similar. Then, to work with NTFS, it was necessary to install third-party driver pads: Paragon NTFS, MacFUSE + NTFS Plugin or NTFS-3G. I don’t remember what I used now. All these programs are still available, some for money, others for nothing, I didn’t look into it too much, because I came across a simple instruction dating back to 2009 (I’m not a slowdown, there was just no need for it before).

It turns out that the “native” NTFS driver in Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) can not only read (by default), but also write data (after kicking) to NTFS disks. The kick looks like this.

Rename the original mount_ntfs. This thing is responsible for connecting NTFS partitions; by default, it does this in read-only mode. Everything else is done in the Terminal; you will need an administrator password.

Sudo mv /sbin/mount_ntfs /sbin/mount_ntfs.orig

We create a “fake” driver in place of the original one. This script calls the original mount_ntfs with options that include read-write (rw) mode.

Sudo nano /sbin/mount_ntfs

An editor will open, insert these 2 lines into it.

#!/bin/sh /sbin/mount_ntfs.orig -o rw " "

Save the script (Ctrl-O + Enter) and exit the editor (Ctrl-X).

Assign the correct rights and attributes to the created file:

Sudo chown root:wheel /sbin/mount_ntfs sudo chmod 755 /sbin/mount_ntfs

We connect an NTFS disk and enjoy full access with read and write support.

If you become worried and want to return everything back, then write there in the Terminal:

Sudo mv /sbin/mount_ntfs.orig /sbin/mount_ntfs

The script we created will be overwritten by the original file. The same problem can happen when updating Mac OS, if they suddenly release new version driver (the current one is dated January 30, 2011, so this is quite likely) - it would be a good idea to save a copy of the script in a safe place.

Disclaimer: I don't know the reason why NTFS support on Mac OS is read-only by default. Some say that this is Microsoft's licensing policy (Full NTFS - only for Windows!), some believe that this driver is crude, experimental and generally “not ready”. The truth is unknown to me, this trick works for me, and you use it at your own peril and risk, there is no one to file a claim with.

Addition: The specified method for enabling recording in the “native” NTFS driver stopped working in OS X 10.7 Lion. Can I return old driver from 10.6 and use it. There is a "hacker" utility that will do this for you, called NTFS Tools, you can download it for free. The program does backup copy drivers, replaces ntfs.kext and replaces mount_ntfs. The program has a function to restore everything to its original state. Works in 10.6, 10.7 and 10.8 ( Mountain Lion). Use at your own peril and risk, as the author of the application warns about.

Since Apple always dislikes the products and developments of its competitors, it prefers not to adapt some of them for its own operating systems. For example, over the long period of its existence, it still could not learn how to load files onto external media with the NTFS system. This oversight on the part of the corporation causes a lot of inconvenience for users who have just started using a Mac computer and cannot understand why the external drive is read-only.

Third-party application developers quickly jumped in and presented their solutions to this problem. Today I suggest you familiarize yourself with the two most common programs - the free SL-NTFS and the paid Paragon NTFS.

The first application can be easily found on the Internet; it is distributed absolutely freely. Installing SL-NTFS takes no more than a minute, and the program interface consists of literally two windows, of which only one is constantly running.

Take your time to look for SL-NTFS in the “ ” folder immediately after installation. A shortcut of the same name will appear in your computer’s system settings, in the “Others” section (near the Flash player).

We launch the application and in the left window we see a list of connected this moment external media. All you have to do is choose required disk and check the “Write permission” box. The media can then be used to download various files and documents.

And here it is paid analogue This program is the Paragon NTFS application. It is available for download on the developer's official website for $20, with a free 10-day trial version. Let's try to figure out why the Paragon program is better than its predecessor.

Paragon NTFS can also be found in system settings, the program driver will be running all the time. We launch the application and see a painfully familiar design: the same two windows, an almost identical menu. Perhaps, paid program It only shows support for the Russian language and the presence of the option to create a boot disk.

By the way, the Paragon developers have prepared a small “surprise” - after the trial period ends, the lion’s share of files sometimes disappear from the external drive. Moreover, they are restored just after purchasing the full version of the application. Miracles.

SL-NTFS works quite correctly for most users, even OS X Lion is supported. For me personally, this utility has become an excellent tool for establishing relations between the Mac and the NTFS file system.

OS X is great for everyone, until someone brings you an external drive formatted as a file drive. NTFS system. And since all Windows users tend to format their external drives with NTFS, this will happen sooner or later. This will also happen to those who use both OS X and Windows on the same computer in different sections - when working with an Apple OS, you will encounter this one day.

OS X can only read volumes formatted in NTFS, but it cannot write data to them. That is, the user has no opportunity to either record a video for someone or edit his own created for Windows documents- absolutely nothing.

The fact is that when developing a standard driver for NTFS, Apple company I encountered extremely unstable operation of it in data recording mode and decided, out of harm’s way, to disable this function in the system completely, since there is a possibility that something will go wrong and you will lose the files written to the disk (they either disappear completely or are not read correctly ) is very large. IN command line You can enable writing to NTFS volumes, but it’s better to never do this, especially since there are wonderful solutions in which everything works fine.

We compared three different third-party drivers: Paragon NTFS for Mac, Tuxera and NTFS-3G using HDD Seagate 500GB connected to MacBook Pro(late 2013) via a USB 3.0 controller on the Asmedia ASM1051 chip. In the description of utilities we will go from simple to complex.

The program icon appears in system settings. The number of settings is minimal, you can only automatically check whether there are updates or not, but the driver just works and ensures that files are written at high speed - we got about 50-60 megabytes per second. And, perhaps, speed is the most important advantage of Paragon NTFS for Mac, since modern world on external drives large volumes still store large volumes of files, recording several tens of gigabytes at a time.

And here the performance of the driver begins to matter, because the difference is not a second or two, but tens of minutes. Anyone who, hurrying somewhere, mentally shouted: “Crawl, crawl!” while the data was being copied, will now understand us.

Paragon NTFS can also format disks in NTFS, and also make them bootable, so that with this driver the computer can be used to restore the functionality of a Windows PC, or partitions on the hard drive of a PC in which the Microsoft operating system is installed.

There is also a file system check and repair function that was available by default in previous versions OS X, but with the release of OS X El Capitan “disappeared somewhere.”

Tuxera is a cross-platform driver for Unix-like operating systems, which includes OS X. The cost of Tuxera NTFS for Mac is $31 (at current exchange rates - 2,124 rubles), there is a free 15-day period during which the program works fully functional.

The interface is somewhat more complicated, divided into two parts: one in system settings, the other in applications. The functionality is standard: checking and restoring the file system, as well as formatting the disk in different file systems. But it’s better not to touch the settings, because to the average user It is not clear what they are responsible for. For example, do you need to “store extended attributes in the original format”? Or do you always need to mount partitions after an incorrect eject? And what happens if you answer “no”?

The driver speed is 25-30 megabytes per second. Interestingly, after installing Tuxera, the reading speed from NTFS media also drops. The developers explain this by caring about stability and reliability.

NTFS-3G is also a project of Tuxera developers, only free and open source code. That is, Tuxera is actually built on the same core. Problem free version The problem is that you will have to compile and install all the code on the system yourself using console commands and downloading the missing libraries from the repositories. Management then also occurs using the command line.

If you're lucky and the driver works the first time, that's good, because if you receive an error message during installation, you'll have to scour a bunch of forums and spend many unforgettable minutes with console commands: During this time, you could probably earn enough money for several licenses of paid software. However, this is always the case with “free” software: it itself is free, and money is earned from technical support.

Actually, Tuxera takes money for GUI and the possibility of installation by a living person, and not by an android robot: the speed of NTFS-3G is the same as the paid version, the same 25-30 MB/sec for writing and the same for reading.