If you've switched to the Mac, welcome aboard. Your old external Windows PC drive will work great on the Mac. Apple has built OS X Yosemite and some previous OS X releases with the ability to read from those disks just fine. If you're using such a drive and you'd like to write new data to them, you'll find you can't unless you add new software. Fortunately, you don't have to spend a dime.
Jun 22, 2018 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. A drive formatted in this fashion can be swapped between a Mac and Windows PC. However, you might choose instead a format you can use easily with OS X, Windows, and Linux. Mar 31, 2020 On a PC, the process is less straightforward than what you see on a Mac, but it’s now easier than ever. Step 1: Right-click on the Start button and select Disk Management on the pop-up menu. Take advantage of read and write access without having to reformat your external drives, both on Windows and macOS. View Support Information Download for Windows Download for Mac (10.10 and Up) Download for Mac (10.6-10.9).
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Every week our Peter Cohen brings you Switch to Mac — a column to help you move from Windows PC to the Mac and OS X!
One option is to back up your old Windows external drive (using Time Machine or another method). Reformat the drive using Apple's Disk Utility software and the company's HFS+ file system instead. Then you can restore the backed up data to the drive.
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Even if the backed up and restored files originally came from a PC, they'll be stored on the drive using a file system the Mac fully understands. That way the drive will be fully Mac-compatible without any need for you to modify the operating system of the Mac to get it to work properly.
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Obviously that solution doesn't work for everyone. Maybe the drive you're using has to be used with a PC occasionally. Whatever the case, the good news is that it's not a show-stopper: There are a few utilities out there that will enable Macs to write to mounted NTFS volumes.
Tuxera's NTFS for Mac is one of the best ways to do it. It uses smart caching to keep data transfer as fast as possible and works with every OS X version since 10.4 (Tiger). NTFS for Mac costs $31, and you can download a demo first to see how it does.
Paragon Software's NTFS for Mac 12 is another excellent choice. It includes several additional utilities for people who need to tinker or repair, to enable you to format drives with NTFS, check NTFS partition integrity, fix errors, and more. NTFS for Mac costs $19.95.
If you're a DIYer and you'd like to go the free route, you'll find a Sourceforge project called NativeNTFS-OSX that gets the job done. NativeNTFS isn't for rookies: It's a bash script that needs to run from the Terminal command line and requires you to have root (administrator) access to your computer.
An easier way to go is to download OS X Fuse, a third-party software tool that extends the Mac's file system capabilities. Follow the directions on the OS X Fuse website to download and configure the software. Follow the instructions to download NTFS-3G for Mac OS X, whose development seems stopped right now but still works in Yosemite. Once OS X Fuse and NTFS-3G are installed, your Mac should be able to read and write to NTFS disks just fine.
Using the built-in SSH client in Mac OS X. Mac OS X includes a command-line SSH client as part of the operating system. To use it, goto Finder, and selext Go - Utilities from the top menu. Then look for Terminal. Terminal can be used to get a local terminal window, and also supports SSH. Ssh app on mac os x 10. (CyberDuck is fully functional, we just coded in VI, so using the Terminal for SSH worked better for me.) You can get CyberDuck for free online, or at a cost on the App Store. Another option is FileZilla. I used it on Windows for FTP, but I believe that it supports SSH as well. It definitely runs on Mac as well as Windows, so it's another option. How to Generate SSH Keys on Mac OS X & Linux; What is SSH and Why do I need it? How to Generate SSH Keys on Windows using PuTTY Download. In order to Generate an SSH Key on Windows, you will need to download PuTTY. PuTTY is a free SSH and telnet client for Windows. PuTTYgen is a robust SSH key pair generation tool that comes via PuTTY Download.
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For a Windows computer to be able to read a hard drive, it needs to have a file system format that is compatible with Windows. File systems compatible with Windows include FAT32 and NTFS.
Why not?
A hard drive formatted for use in a Mac has either an HFS or HFS+ file system. For this reason, a Mac-formatted hard drive is not directly compatible, nor readable by a Windows computer. The HFS and HFS+ file systems are not readable by Windows.
What are my options?
Using a third-party application, it may be possible for a Windows computer to read a Mac-formatted hard drive. A few of the more popular applications used by Windows to read a Mac hard drive are listed below.
- HFSExplorer - Free-to-use program and requires Java to be installed on the Windows computer. It allows for read-only access to files on the Mac hard drive. Updating or deleting files on the Mac hard drive from the Windows PC is not possible.
- MacDrive - Available as a 5-day free trial and can be purchased for $49.99, MacDrive allows users to view, update, and delete files on the Mac hard drive. MacDrive can integrate with Windows Explorer for easier browsing of the hard drive's files.
- Paragon HFS+ for Windows - This program is available as a 10-day free trial and can be purchased for $19.95. Like MacDrive, users can view, update, and delete files on the Mac hard drive. It also integrates with Windows Explorer.