First, you can go into Computer/My Computer, right click on the drive you want to reformat (make sure your data is backed up somewhere else), and click on Format. Change whatever settings you would like as long as you have NTFS selected as the filesystem, and hit Format. Tuxera NTFS for Mac is a full read-write NTFS driver that enables your Mac to read and write NTFS-formatted drives. It also comes with Tuxera Disk Manager, a companion app that lets you format, check, and repair NTFS drives.
If you want to enable the support for NTFS, you can easily do it by editing a small file. Simply insert your hard drive, in your MAC note down its drive name. Now press cmd + space to launch spotlights then type in terminal and hit enter. In terminal copy paste the following command. Sudo nano /etc/fstab With this command, you are telling the super user to open the fstab file using the nano text editor.
You will have to enter the login password. Next, a new window will open, though you won’t see anything on it. Simply paste the following command. LABEL=DRIVE_NAME none ntfs rw,auto,nobrowse Replace the drive name with the hard drive name. And save changes. To do that, first type CTRL + o (o for orange) to write data and CTRL + x to exit. And that’s it.
Restart your MAC and under finder, go to the “Go -> Go to Folder” and type in /Volumes. You will your NTFS drive. Verdict: This is the most simple method. However, I don’t prefer it, neither it’s recommended by apple (and that’s why it’s hidden) because it’s experimental and people who have tried this, reported an error. Also, since there are other solutions, why to take the risk.
#2 NTFS -3g (recommended) This is the most popular method, and also the one I am using right now. Instead of tinkering the core system settings via terminal, you can install a free software like NTFs-3g.
How To Format Hard Drive For Ntfs On Mac
The development of NTFS 3g has been stopped from a long time. But, you can still get it work by installing few extra packages.
Well precisely, you have to install 3 program one by one. I have this guide on MACbreaker, and here is the summary of the process, for details check out the original article. First, start with fuse for OS X — this provides a framework for NTFS support. Download it from and install it like you normally do. Under the installation type make sure to check the “MacFUSE Compatibility Layer”.