Program for reading ntfs on mac sierra. Full work with NTFS on Mac OS X

Windows media, but cannot write data to it by default. Fortunately, there are several ways to get around this limitation, and today we will tell you about them.

This will come in handy if you want to install a system on your Mac Boot Camp, since Windows uses the NTFS file system. However, for external media it is better to use the exFAT system. macOS can both read and write exFAT media, just like Windows.

Available options

You will have to choose one from the options below.

• Paid third party drivers: There are third party NTFS drivers for Mac that you can install and they will work quite well. They are paid, but they are easy to install and will work better than free ones.
• Free third party drivers: There are also free drivers that provide NTFS support, but they are more difficult to install, especially on Macs running 11 El Capitan and later. They are slower than paid ones and less secure.
• Experimental supportNTFS fromApple: In the operating room macOS system There is experimental support for writing to NTFS media. However, it is disabled by default and can be enabled via Terminal. There is no guarantee that the function will work properly, and it may even cause problems with the NTFS file system. This can often result in data corruption. We strongly discourage the use of this support, and it is disabled by default for a reason.

Best paid driver:Paragon NTFS ForMac

We solve the problem of the inability to write files in OS X to storage media formatted in a popular format NTFS.

What's the problem?

There are many devices around us, USB flash drives and external hard drives, which use universal file systems FAT32 And NTFS , developed by the company Microsoft. There are no problems with the first one: Mac OS X calmly reads and writes files to drives with a file system FAT32 . However, this system has one very significant limitation: the maximum size of one file cannot exceed 4 gigabytes.

In the age of FULLHD video, such a limitation seems ridiculous. Therefore, most users use the file system NTFS , in which the restriction on maximum size The file is 16 terabytes. Mac OS X can only read information from disks in the format NTFS , but the recording is not available. There are several options for solving the problem, and below I will talk about the most popular ones!

I would like to immediately make a reservation that these methods have been tested on the operating system Mac OS X 10.9.5, but most likely most of them will work on Yosemite.

As external hard disk I use Seagate GoFlex Satellite 500GB. It does not have outstanding speed characteristics, but it has a built-in battery and Wi-Fi, which allows it to be used in conjunction with a tablet and smartphone.

Free methods:

1. Enable support using standard OS tools

Yes, this option is possible, but it has several significant disadvantages. First, you will need to be able to work with the command line. Secondly, this method is considered not very reliable, and there is a risk of damaging the file system. If you have a great desire, full description this method can be easily found on Google by searching "enable ntfs recording mac os" . There are a lot of points and nuances, so we will not consider it in this article.

2. Tuxera NTFS-3G

This free driver NTFS For MacOS And Linux systems The developer has already stopped supporting it, but it worked on my system without any problems.

To install, you will need to download the distribution kit of the driver itself, which also includes the MacFUSE kernel, which will allow the driver to work.

– First you need to install MacFUSE.

– The installer will ask you which caching method to use. Choose better "No caching" , because In another mode, driver stability is not guaranteed.

After installation, you will need to restart your computer, after which the icon will appear NTFS-3G. Clicking on it will take you to the driver settings:

There is nothing useful here except the button to turn off the driver and delete it, and it is better not to touch any checkboxes.

After installing the driver, you can connect the hard drive and check the read and write speed. For this I use the utility Blackmagic Disk Speed ​​Test, which is available for download in the App Store.

Work results free driver:

Reading speed at normal level for this hard drive, and here is the recording speed very low. Of course, for many users this performance will be enough. But if you want to get the most out of your hard drive, you will have to pay attention to paid drivers.

Paid methods:

1. Tuxera NTFS for Mac

This is a paid driver from the same developer as NTFS-3G. It is still being supported and improved to this day. You can download it from the developer’s website using the link. It is possible to download and test a 15-day trial version. Next, you will need to buy or remove the driver. The cost is $31, which at the current exchange rate turns into a rather impressive amount in rubles:

There are no special parameters during the installation process. After installation, you also need to restart your computer.

An icon will also appear in the OS settings menu Tuxera NTFS, which will contain the driver settings.

The read and write speed test results gave excellent results for this hard drive:

2. Paragon NTFS for Mac

A very popular driver. To be honest, before writing this article I had never even encountered any competitors. You can download the driver. The developers give you 10 days to get acquainted with the product. At the same time the price full version the product looks more interesting compared to its competitor from Tuxera:

The installation also takes place without any unnecessary questions, and the installer itself looks prettier:

There are no special options provided in the driver settings. You can enable/disable the driver:

Speed ​​test results work hard I was unexpectedly pleased with the disc! Recording speed comparable to competitor from Tuxera, but the reading speed is consistently 5 megabytes per second higher:

Everyone is happy with OS X, until someone brings you an external drive formatted with the NTFS file system. And since all Windows users tend to format their external drives in 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 hard Seagate drive 500 GB connected to MacBook Pro(end of 2013) through USB controller 3.0 on 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 to 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 Large external drives 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 scan and repair function file system, which was available by default in previous versions OS X, but with the release of OS X El Capitan “disappeared somewhere.”

Tuxera - 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 is 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 into different file systems. But it’s better not to touch the settings, because ordinary 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 is that you will have to compile and install all the code on the system yourself using console commands and downloading from repositories missing libraries. Management then also takes place 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 for several licenses 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 paid version, the same 25-30 MB/sec for writing and the same amount for reading.

Rumor has it that if you ever come across an Apple computer and operating system... Mac system OS, then return to Windows more you won't want to. And after “touching the beautiful”, you will immediately begin to perceive all the “creativity” of Microsoft with a fair amount of skepticism (except, perhaps, for the mice, which are miraculously good from Steve Ballmer’s corporation Satya Nadella). Whether this is true or not, we don’t undertake to judge: some people prefer Mac OS, others prefer Windows. But the fact is that Mac OS users quite often have to deal with “aliens” from the Windows world, and, alas, nothing can be done about it. What do you mean by aliens? Yes, a lot of things, to be completely honest. But now we’ll talk about such a “Windows monster” as a native file Windows system– NTFS. Or more precisely, about drives formatted in this file system. Alas, it is impossible to fully work with them on computers running Mac OS by default - the Apple operating system only supports reading data from such drives, but writing information to them is alas and ah.

In practice, this leads to problems with external hard drives. Let's say if Windows user will give you a “hard” with a certain array of data, then you will only be able to view it, but not change it in any way (delete, edit, add a file). It’s good if a friend who is a Windows fan handed you a hard drive with some movie and a strong recommendation to watch it; You can run a movie directly from a disk connected to a Mac and not encounter the “NFTS problem.” But what if it is vital to write something to someone else's hard drive with NTFS, without resorting to formatting? For example, a client asked to send your video presentation (or a large vector layout, or anything else) to his screw, and a multimillion-dollar contract depends on this?

It is worth emphasizing that this may not even be the case at all. hard drive, and a USB flash drive. Until recently, most of these drives were formatted in FAT32, which works equally well with Mac OS and Windows. However, modern flash drives increasingly come with NTFS. Because FAT32 has a limitation on file size: it cannot be more than 4 GB, so the movie is really high quality You can’t write to it anymore, and the manufacturers of USB flash drives understand this very well. So they format them in NTFS. So users of Apple computers may also have difficulties with drives of this kind...

There are several methods for “training” Mac OS to fully work with NTFS. For example, you can try to edit the file fstab in Mac OS, however, this is not recommended: the consequences can be unpredictable, including problems with the computer’s performance. To solve the problem discussed in this material there is also free utilities, and paid. The vast majority of “free” options (SLNTFS, NTFS-3G and others), however, have one significant drawback: they do not provide the required speed. Roughly speaking, you can write anything to NTFS-formatted drives, however, at a snail's pace. Whether such decisions are worth getting involved with is an open question.

In my opinion, it is much more logical to pay, since the “high-speed” driver is not that expensive. A kind of reference solution in this area is Paragon NTFS for Mac 12 for 990 rubles. What are the advantages of this option?

Firstly, just in speed. The developers guarantee that this is the only product on the market that provides full access To NTFS files(read/write) at the same speed as the built-in Mac OS driver for files in HFS+, its native system. For comparison: free solution it takes about 10 minutes to record a 10 GB movie, and when installed driver Paragon NTFS for Mac 12 – about a little over a minute.

I also note that Paragon NTFS for Mac is the first NTFS driver with full support for Mac OS 10.10 Yosemite. This, by the way, is an important advantage paid solutions over free ones: the latter may stop developing even tomorrow, plus in their case no one will be responsible for the safety of your data. But shareware (in in this case represented by Paragon NTFS for Mac 12) and high-quality technical support there are, and timely updates.

And here's another moment. We know that not all MacBook and iMac owners like to communicate on this sensitive topic, and yet... Practice shows that very, very often Apple computers Mac OS and Windows are located side by side. The latter is installed primarily to launch applications that exist for Windows, but are not available for Mac OS. List hundreds different examples We won’t be using “Windows Only” programs; we’ll just note that most of them fall into the category of games. So, if you install Windows on a Mac using Boot Camp, formatting part of the hard drive in NTFS, then this partition will be read-only under Mac OS.

And if you create in Windows environment, say a MS Word document, then after switching to Mac OS it will not be editable. The situation is not very pleasant, but Paragon NTFS for Mac 12 will help you cope with it. That is, this driver belongs to the must-have category not only for active users of external drives, but also for everyone who wants to “sit on two chairs” using both popular operating systems. According to some data, in Russia almost a third of Apple computer owners are involved in such dubious (from the point of view of orthodox “macologists”) activities.

You can buy Paragon NTFS for Mac 12. The one who enters the code ntfs1210 When making a purchase, you will receive a 30% discount. Consequently, the driver will cost not 990 rubles, but 693 rubles.

Enjoy it and thank you for your attention!

In this article we will tell you how to do it for free, using standard means Mac OS and without the help of third-party programs can activate recording to external drives in NTFS format. It's no secret that Mac OS has long supported reading disks with Microsoft file systems: FAT32 and NTFS. Moreover, in the case of FAT, both reading and writing are available, which was quite enough for Mac owners until a certain point, but the quality of copied materials is steadily growing, and with it the volume is also increasing disk space which they occupy. Thus, Mac OS users did not have problems until flash drives and external hard drives did not grow in volume, and the size of many files (for example, videos) did not exceed 4 GB, which is the limit for FAT after which external drives began to be widely used with NTFS. This file system is “native” to Windows, but it is something foreign to Mac OS and therefore, to fully use this file system, the Mac needs a special driver. There are two types of such drivers: official driver, developed by Apple and built into Mac OS, or third-party drivers that require additional installation and in most cases additional fee. In this article we will look at the activation option standard driver from Apple for reading and writing NTFS drives.

Important: This instruction is relevant for the following Mac versions OS X: .

Starting with Mac OS 10.3 “Panther”, support for NTFS disks appeared, but only for reading - nothing could be written to them. A little later they appeared third party programs, allowing reading and writing to disks with NTFS, the most famous option is perhaps “Paragon NTFS for Mac” from the Russian company Paragon. On at the moment This software costs 690 rubles. Thus, in addition to installing a special paid NTFS driver, Mac users had two options - either use external media exclusively with FAT32 in order to be able to exchange data with devices running other operating systems, or format external drives for HFS+ (Mac OS Extended), which would also not be so easy to read under Windows. However, starting with version 10.7 "Lion" appeared support for writing to NTFS drives, however, for some reason this function remains inactive even more modern versions Mac OS. How to activate it? This can be done individually for each disk by entering its name in special file. This way, all disks with the names you specify will be automatically mounted and writable. Please note that drive names should be case sensitive, and try not to use spaces in drive names. Here step by step instructions : 1. Launch the terminal ( Terminal.app). It can be found either through Spotlight search or in the Applications/Utilities folder ( Applications/Utilities)

2. Open the file in the terminal /etc/fstab, for example, using the nano editor. Type the following command in the terminal window and press Enter: sudo nano /etc/fstab At this point, the system will most likely ask you to enter your administrator password.
3. A blank terminal window will open text file. Copy the following text there: LABEL=MyNTFSDrive none ntfs rw,auto,nobrowse Replace “MyNTFSDrive” with the name NTFS disk which you are going to use.
4. Click Control+O to save changes and then Control+X to get out text editor. 5. Safely Unmount your ntfs disk and insert it again. Now this disk does not appear either on the desktop or in the list of disks. To see this drive in the finder and access it, go to step 6. 6. Type the following command into the terminal window and press Enter: open /Volumes 7. You will see a list of all connected drives, including your NTFS drive, which is now available for recording. To prevent you from having to re-open the terminal and go through step 6 in the future, you can create a shortcut to the Volumes folder. 8. Drag the Volumes folder to the Finder's Favorites.
Or, for example, on the desktop. You can also do this without leaving the terminal: sudo ln -s /Volumes ~/Desktop/Volumes Done! You can now read and write to your chosen NTFS drive. If you need to write to other NTFS drives, then simply repeat steps 1-5, adding to fstab file new line and remembering to correctly specify the name of the new disk. This instruction relevant for next versions Mac OS X: 10.7 Lion, 10.8 Mountain Lion, 10.9 Mavericks, 10.10 Yosemite.