Hi, I have a NEW WD My Passport drive. I am not sure if it was only for a PC but It had Mac Discovery app on it to so I thought it would work with a Mac so I did not reformat it in Exfat.
other wise I would have formatted it in exfat for use with PC and Mac.
So this drive is Formatted in NTFS from WD Factory.
I copied files onto it from my Win-10 PC so I know the drive is working correctly.
It actually works really good. Better than I thought.
But Now I want to copy files onto it from my Mac but I think because it is formatted in NTFS
I can not copy from my Mac to the WD.
NTFS is necessary if you want to hook up an external drive to a TV for media playback or have the best compatibility going back and forth from macOS to Windows.
It’s a much better file system for multi-OS use than exFAT.
I personally paid $20 for the Paragon license. It’s great software. There is no better NTFS solution for the Mac.
With this software you can format the drive as NTFS and read as well as write to it. You can only read NTFS drives by default with macOS.
For exclusive Mac use you should use APFS if you’re on High Sierra or newer. Even more so with SSDs internal and external.
Well, most external hard drives are designed to work for Windows computers. Windows was mainly optimized for NTFS (New Technology file system) format, on the other hand, APFS was created for the Mac OS. NTFS is not compatible with Mac and similarly APFS does not get along with Windows. So if you’re trying to connect an external hard drive to a Mac, you might have to format the drive before you can use it.
Further, I suggest you to check the below link that explains all the methods to format your external drive for mac without any data loss:
Without any software, there is an option. Backup your files from the WD drive and reformat the Drive to exFAT, which works natively on both Windows and macOS.
You cannot copy files from a Mac to your WD My Passport drive because macOS only supports reading NTFS drives, not writing to them. This means you cannot modify or delete any files on the drive while it is connected to a Mac.
To copy files freely, you can reformat the drive to exFAT, which is fully compatible with both Mac and Windows.
Alternatively, if you want to keep the NTFS format, you can install a third-party NTFS driver on your Mac (such as iBoysoft NTFS for Mac or Mounty). This will unlock full read-write support so you can transfer and edit files without restrictions.
Hi! macOS natively supports reading only for NTFS formatted drives, which is why you can’t copy files onto it from your Mac.
You have two main solutions:
Install an NTFS driver: WD offers a free driver (Paragon NTFS for Mac for WD) on their official support site. Installing it allows full read/write access on Mac without losing current data. Steps to Install Paragon NTFS Driver for macOS for WD and G-DRIVE
Reformat to exFAT: Back up the files currently on the drive to your Windows PC, reformat the drive to exFAT using Mac’s Disk Utility, and move your files back. exFAT works natively on both Mac and Windows without extra software.
