Photo by Siyuan Hu on Unsplash I can’t copy files to an external hard drive? If you connect an External Hard Drive to your Mac and try to copy files/folders and a
prohibition symbol appears you are in the right place. You will see that if you open External Hard Drive at the bottom you will find a symbol depicting a pen with a slash:
On this page, I'll be showing you the complete process of how to configuring NTFS storage devices and make them accessible on a Mac computer. If you are looking for a way to copy files from Mac to an external hard drive or USB in NTFS format, follow the guide below. You'll make the NTFS storage devices work on your Mac computer. How Do I Copy Files from My Mac to an External Hard Drive in NTFS Format?Can Mac use the NTFS external hard drive? I wanted to copy some important files from Mac to my external hard drive as a backup but just couldn't. Is there a way that can configure Mac to work with Windows NT File System? Yes! The reason why you can't transfer files between a Mac computer and an NTFS external storage device is that the NTFS format is not a compatible file system in macOS. Apple macOS doesn't have the right to write to an NTFS device. And that explains why that you can only view and see the content in your external hard drive but can't make any changes to the content, such as editing, modifying, correcting, removing, or deleting. So how to make it possible to copy files from Mac to an external hard drive? Follow the complete guides below, you'll acquire the access to copy or transfer files between Mac and the NTFS external hard drive successfully. Guide 1. Enable NTFS Write Support to External Hard Drive on MacTo configure Mac working with NTFS-formatted storage devices, your first step is to enable NTFS write support on Mac computer. Here we connected 3 practical methods with detailed steps that you can follow a favored method to start: #1. Format NTFS External Disk to FAT Your Quick Guide:
Let's get started. Method 1. Format NTFS External Hard Drive to FATTool: Mac Disk Utility Duration: 2-5 minutes Apple Mac operating systems are designed to support HPFS, APFS, HFS+, HFS, and FAT32, etc., file systems. As for the NTFS format, macOS only supports reading content in the device. To obtain access to modify, correct, add, or remove data from the NTFS external hard drive on Mac, you can format the device to the FAT file system. Note that this will result in data loss. So make sure that you back up essential files in advance. Here are the steps to format NTFS external hard drive to FAT on Mac: Step 1. Connect the NTFS external hard drive to Mac. Step 2. Go to Finder, click "Applications" > "Utilities" > Double-click to open Disk Utility.  Step 3. Select the NTFS external hard drive and click "Erase" in Disk Utility. Step 4. Select "MS-DOS (FAT)" as the new file system format for the external hard drive, then click "Erase". Method 2. 1-Click to Enable NTFS Write Support via EaseUS NTFS for MacTool: EaseUS NTFS for Mac Duration: Within 1 Minute Is there a way that can configure NTFS external hard drive access on Mac without formatting? Sure! Third-party software like EaseUS NTFS for Mac can enable NTFS write support on Mac so to make your NTFS external hard drive writable automatically. With it, you can manually or automatically enable accessibility on Mac to read, write, modify, copy, transfer, and even delete files on an NTFS external hard drive. How to use it? Here are the steps: Step 1. Launch and activate EaseUS NTFS for Mac. Click "I already have a license" to unlock this software. Step 2. Connect an NTFS drive to Mac, EaseUS NTFS for Mac will automatically detect the device. Select your drive and you'll see it's now marked as 'Read-only". Click "Enable Writable" to add read and write rights to the drive. Step 3. When the state of NTFS drives turns into "Writable". Step 4. EaseUS NTFS for Mac will pops up a window to help Mac get access to the NTFS drive:
Step 5. When EaseUS NTFS for Mac restarts, you can then open to check, read, write, and even modify saved data on the NTFS device. As long as you enabled the NTFS write support to your external EaseUS NTFS for Mac will detect the NTFS external hard drive and automatically enable it on Mac. After this, you can open the NTFS external hard drive on a Mac computer and make changes to the saved data flexibly. Method 3. Enable NTFS Write Support via TerminalTool: Mac Command Tool - Terminal Duration: 2-3 minutes The last way that you can try is to turn to the Mac built-in command tool -Terminal for help. It requires that you need to be familiar with Mac computer operations and be very careful. Any false operation may cause serious results. Let's see how to make your NTFS external hard drive writeable on Mac computers: Step 1. Go to Finder > Click "Applicatinos" > "Utilites" > Double-click to open "Terminal". Step 2. Connect the NTFS external hard drive to your Mac computer. Step 3. Type sudo nano /etc/fstab in Terminal and press Return. Step 4. Type LABEL=NAME none ntfs rw, auto, nobrowse in Terminal and replace NAME with the name of your NTFS external hard drive. Step 5. Press Control + O to save the changes. Step 6. Press Control + X to close Terminal. Step 7. Go to Finder, click "Go" > "Go to Folder" > Type "/Volumes" and click "Go". After this, Mac will list your external hard drive with the internal hard drives on Mac in the Volumes pane. And you can then follow the guide in the next part to copy files from Mac to an external hard drive successfully. Guide 2. Transfer or Copy Files from Mac to External Hard DriveStep 1. Open the external hard drive. Step 2. Open the internal disk or folder, where you saved essential files for copying or transferring. Step 3. Drag the files from a Mac local volume or folder and drop the data into the external hard drive. Repeat the operation until you copied all the desired files from Mac to the external hard drive. NTFS External Disks Need Write Support for File Transferring on Mac, Go and Make It Work NowNote that when you directly connect an external hard drive to a Mac computer, you'll be presented with Read-Only limits on the disk. As a result, you can only view files and file content on the external hard drive on Mac. To obtain access to editing, modifying, copying, transferring, or even deleting files or file content on the NTFS external hard drive, you need to first enable NTFS write support on Mac. To do so, you have three options here for help:
For the easiest solution, don't miss EaseUS NTFS for Mac as it'll automatically enable the drive modification authority to your Mac computer once the NTFS external hard drive is detected by this software. To make use of the NTFS external hard drive between your Windows and Mac computer, follow the solutions on this page to make it work now. Why can't I transfer files to external hard drive Mac?If you can't move or copy a file or folder, you might need to change its permissions settings. You might also need to change permissions settings for the disk, server, or folder where you want to move the item. On your Mac, select the item, then choose File > Get Info, or press Command-I.
Why files are not copying to external hard drive?If you can't copy files to external hard drive and it's frozen, there is an off-chance that the drive is improperly formatted or something is wrong with the drive's software aspect. You can fix it by reformatting the drive to NTFS.
Why can't I add things to my hard drive on Mac?What Does It Mean When a Hard Drive Is Locked on Your Mac?. The drive is set to read-only permissions, so you can't add or delete files.. The external hard drive uses a partially supported file system, like NTFS, which macOS only supports as read-only.. Why is my Mac not copying and pasting?The most likely reason why copy and paste are not working on your Mac is that your clipboard stopped working and it needs to be reset to get it going again. Sometimes, you may even get error messages saying “pboard quit unexpectedly.” Then you will know that you need to restart pboard to get it working again.
|
