Hello, World!

Today I had to stop coding because my pc didn't have enough memory to make even a single more commit. I knew I was close, but I guess backing up my phone before changing the battery pushed my PC over the edge. Good thing I had purchased an external drive not too long ago.

I plug it in, register it, and- oh, it has a NTFS and I'm on a Mac. To keep the long-story short, NTFS is a Windows file system that has read-only support on macOS by default, so I can't use it as a drive as-is. The typical workaround is to buy bloated 3rd party software or get an external hard drive with a file system compatible with macOS, but I thought I'd find a third option to share with you.

All you need is your Mac’s Terminal and an internet connection. I used iTerm, but the built-in Terminal app works just as well. You can find Terminal in your Utilities folder.

Step 1: Update Homebrew

Homebrew is a package manager for macOS that makes installing software easy. First, make sure it’s up to date by running:

brew update

If you don’t have Homebrew installed, you can add it with:

/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"

Step 2: Install NTFS Drivers

Next, install the NTFS-3G driver, which enables read and write support for NTFS drives:

brew install --cask macfuse

brew install gromgit/fuse/ntfs-3g-mac

Step 3: Identify Your Drive

List all connected drives with:

diskutil list

Look for your NTFS drive in the output. It will look something like this:

                

                    

                        

                            
#:
                            
TYPE NAME
                            
SIZE
                            
IDENTIFIER
                        
                    
                    

                        

                            
0:
                            
GUID_partition_scheme
                            
*500.1 GB
                            
disk2
                        
                        

                            
1:
                            
EFI EFI
                            
209.7 MB
                            
disk2s1
                        
                        

                            
2:
                            
Apple_HFS MyExternalDrive
                            
499.9 GB
                            
disk2s2
                        
                    
                
                

Note the identifier for your NTFS partition (for example, /dev/disk2s1).

Step 4: Unmount the Drive

Before mounting with write access, unmount the drive:

diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk2

Replace /dev/disk2 with your actual drive identifier.

Step 5: Create a Mount Point

Make a directory where you’ll mount the NTFS drive:

sudo mkdir -p /Volumes/NTFS-RW

Step 6: Mount the NTFS Drive with Write Access

Now, mount the drive using:

sudo ntfs-3g /dev/disk2s1 /Volumes/NTFS-RW -olocal -oallow_other

Again, replace /dev/disk2s1 with your partition’s identifier. This command gives you read and write access.

You should now see your NTFS drive in Finder, and you’ll be able to copy files to it!

Conclusion

That’s it! You’ve enabled write access to your NTFS drive on macOS without paying for extra software. You’ll need to repeat the mount command each time you plug it in and want to write to the drive, but you could always automate that with a script. Hope this helps you as much as it helped me!