

We recommend you install free NTFS for Mac to read/write to a Windows NTFS drive. The drawback is that it is time-consuming especially when you have tons of data to back up. But it will become tedious because you need to do it every time you restart your computer.Īnother one-for-all solution is to back up the current files and format the disk to FAT or exFAT.
#Usb file system for mac computers full#
To enable full NTFS read and write access, you can modify macOS kernel extension through commands. When using an external USB drives such as external hard drive, solid-state drive or thumb drive, you will find you can’t store any files to it and existing files are locked or read-only.

NTFS is the proprietary file system by Microsoft and macOS only allows read-only access to NTFS. Still in the Get Info window, under General information, you can see the Format is Windows NT File System. If the restrained file permission is not the cause, file system incompatibility could be the roadblock. Case 2: macOS has read-only support to NTFS-formatted disks. If you are the administrator of this computer, you can also tick the box in front of “Ignore ownership on this volume” and then input your admin password to be able to write to the external disk. Step 6: Click on the lock to ensure the change.Step 5: Click the Read only under Privilege of your user name and select Read & Write.Step 4: Click on the lock at the corner and input your user name and password.A message ” You can only read” will be shown underneath. Step 3: Unfold Sharing & Permissions at the bottom.Step 2: Right click the icon of the external disk and select Get Info.Step 1: Connect the external hard drive to the Mac and wait for it to be mounted on the desktop.If the permission was set up on the Mac computer, follow the following steps to change read-only files on Mac. If the read-only permission was set up by third-party software, you will need the same software to change the file permission. The previous owner has set up read-only permission to this disk to protect data from unwanted changes. It happens often if you get the disk from another hand. Case 1: You have read-only file privilege over the external disk If not, read through the article to get the read-only disk problem resolved. If you know the cause, you can jump to the specific case and find the solutions. We will look into each cause and illustrate detailed solutions. The read-only state could result from limited file control, unsupported NTFS access or corrupted disk protection. For example, when you connect an external disk to a Mac, the disk becomes readable but not writable. Using physical external disks will sometimes encounter unexpected situations. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
