Some questions that might come up
By Paragon Software Group Paragon NTFS for Mac is fully compatible with Apple's new security policy ensuring fast, hassle-free and safe access to NTFS partitions from macOS 10.12 Sierra. May 23, 2020 Our software library provides a free download of Tuxera NTFS 2019 for Mac. The latest installer occupies 70.4 MB on disk. Tuxera NTFS for Mac belongs to System Tools. Our antivirus scan shows that this Mac download is clean. The actual developer of this Mac application is Tuxera Inc.
My NTFS disk diapppears for Desktop when using Mounty
Unfortunately this is by design.
Mounty is using the Apple kernel driver. It allows read/write mount of NTFS drives only with the 'nobrowse' option. The mount point becomes hidden and disappears from Desktop and Finder menu. To make it easier to re-locate the drive I have added the 'Show in Finder' option in Mounty menu.
My USB stick will not re-mount. An alert is popping up telling me to re-attach the stick, but this doesn't help.
This can happen when the USB stick is not cleanly unmounted from the Windows PC. If you simply unplug the USB stick from PC without using the little tray icon to detach the hardware correctly, the volume will be marked as 'not cleanly unmounted'. There might be some dirty sectors left and Mac OS X will not be able to re-mount in read-write mode for that reason.
Suddenly all my files disappeared - please help!
This is usually happen when not all files are written properly due to an unmount operation not finishing. The NTFS partition might be marked as 'dirty' and the Apple NTFS driver cannot recover from that situation. Mounty will not delete anything by itself, please try to restore your files on a Windows PC using usual recovery s/w, i.e. chkdsk command line utility or professional tools like GetDataBack for Windows. If you do not own any Windows you can use tools for macOS that can deal with NTFS partition maintenance, like Paraogn Harddisk Manager or Tuxera Disk Manager.
Sometimes the files are grayed out and cannot be modified anymore.
This is because the file has extended attributes, refer to the Manpage of xattr for further explanation. If you open the file path in terminal application, you can list the attributes with ls -l@ <filename>, and remove those attributes with xattr -d com-apple.<attribute> <filename>, i.e.: xattr -d com.apple.FinderInfo testfile.txt
Unable to re-mount in read/write mode when trying to mount Windows 10 partition
If you try to mount a Windows System partition, Mounty might fail when Hibernation feature is enabled. There is a Fast Start feature in Windows which might be enabled by default, and this is causing the drive to be locked. Within Windows running, you need to run the command powercfg /hibernate off in an admin powershell and restart Windows to disable this feature and remove the lock to enable it for Mounty. Thanks to Art Schultz pointing that out.
- 1. Mac Files Tips
- 2. Mac Software
- 3. Mac Storage Tips
- 4. Mac Troubleshooting
- 5. Mac OS
by Anna SherryUpdated on 2019-11-30 / Update for Mac OS
One of the major differences between a Windows computer and a Mac is that they often use different file systems for their devices. Windows mostly uses NTFS whereas Mac uses FAT or its own file system. Since both use different file systems, you cannot write to NTFS drives on a Mac. You can write to a FAT file system on a Windows computer, though.
Apple does not natively support writing data to NTFS drives on a Mac, however, there are some ways to do the same but they may not always work normally. Our guide below shows how to use NTFS for Mac and write data to it from your machine.
Way 1. Write to NTFS Drives on Mac with Paragon NTFS for Mac
Since your Mac does not have an official option to write data to NTFS drives, you are forced to use a third-party app to get the job done. If you do a quick Google search, you would come across many software claiming to help you with the Mac OS NTFS write task. Many of those are false claims and the software do not work as they are supposed to.
Fortunately, there is one that works exactly the way it should. It is called Paragon NTFS and it allows you to work seamlessly with the NTFS drives attached to your Mac.
It is a paid software, but it gives you ten days of free trial for you to check out its features. If you like it, you can then purchase a license to continue using the software. The following is how it works on a Mac.
Step 1. Head over to the official Paragon Software website and download and install the software on your Mac.
Step 2. Restart your Mac to bring changes into effect on your system.
Step 3. When your Mac restarts, you will find all of your attached NTFS drives showing up in Finder on your Mac.
You may then add whatever data you want to your drives that use NTFS file system. That is how you perform a Mac NTFS write operation on your machine.
Way 2. Enable NTFS Writing on Mac Using Apple's Experimental NTFS-Writing Support
Apple has an experimental feature to let you write data to your NTFS based drives. However, it is highly discouraged that you use the feature to write data. The feature is still in experimental mode and it may cause data corruption or data loss on your drives.
If you would like to give the method a try despite knowing its disadvantages, the following should help you do it. To be on the safer side, create a backup of your NTFS drive if you have stored your important files on it. Performing the following operation may result in you losing your valuable data on your drive.
Step 1. Make sure your NTFS drive uses a single word label. Disconnect your drive from your Mac.
Step 2. Click on Launchpad in your Dock and search for and click on Terminal. It will launch the Terminal app on your Mac.
Step 3. When the Terminal app launches, type in the following command and press Enter.
sudo nano /etc/fstab
Step 4. A file will open in an editor on your screen. Add the following line to the file and save the file by pressing Ctrl + O. Replace YOUR with the label of your NTFS drive.
LABEL=YOUR none ntfs rw,auto,nobrowse
Step 5. Finally press the Ctrl + X key to close the editor. Connect your NTFS drive to your Mac and you will find it in /Volumes ready to add data.
There you go. That is how you use Apple's experimental NTFS write method to add data to a NTFS based drive. It is a NTFS for Mac free tool to use on your Mac.
Extra Tip: How to Recover Lost Data from NTFS Drive
If the experimental feature did not work well, you may face a data loss situation on your NTFS drive. If this has happened, you may want to recover the data saved on your drive.
Since the data has been deleted from your drive, you cannot use any of the built-in options on your Mac to recover the data. Fortunately, there is a third-party software called Tenorshare 4DDiG for Mac Data Recovery to help you recover the data on your drives.
The software specializes in helping users recover data from various data loss scenarios. It has support for multiple file systems, can recover data from external drives, and is extremely easy to use. The following is how you use it to recover your data.
Step 1 Connect your NTFS drive to your Mac and download, install, and launch the software on your Mac. When the software opens, click on your NTFS drive and hit the Scan button.
Step 2 Let the software scan your drive to recover files. When the results appear, select the files you would like to recover and click on Recover.
Step 3 Choose a folder where you would like to save the recovered files.
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You are done. Your chosen files will be recovered from your NTFS drive and saved to your Mac.
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You may also be interested in How to Recover Data from APFS Drive.
Conclusion
While it is easy to read NTFS on Mac, it is almost impossible to write data to a NTFS drive on a Mac. Despite being hard, we have shown you the methods to write data to your NTFS drives from your Mac. We hope it helps you out.