What many consider to be the go-to for writing to NTFS drives on a Mac, Microsoft NTFS comes from developer Paragon Software. It gives you complete control over how your Mac interacts with NTFS-formatted drives, letting you edit, copy, and delete files from them as though your machine had native support. If you format as NTFS it works great on all Windows machines, but Macs can only read from the device, they cannot write to it. There are some plugins to help the Mac deal with NTFS but our experience proves those add-ins to be unstable. If you format it as exFAT all computers (Windows and Macs) will see the drive except for Windows XP. 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. Tuxera Disk Manager lets you fully manage your hard drive and stored data regardless of the operating system.
Sharing data between a Mac running macOS or OS X and PCs running Windows may not be that straightforward. By default, Macs can only read files from Windows-formatted external hard drives, but not write to them. This prevents you from saving, editing, copying, or deleting anything stored on your drives using your Mac. The reason behind this? The file system used by Macs (HFS+) is different than the file system used in Windows (NTFS).
How to read NTFS files on a Mac
There’s a real easy solution for this, however: your Mac just needs a driver. 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. Tuxera Disk Manager lets you fully manage your hard drive and stored data regardless of the operating system.
Formatting drives with Tuxera Disk Manager
You may find that you first need to format the external drive so it can be used with both your Mac and your PC. Formatting is the process of preparing a drive for use by an operating system. For reference, we explain in more detail what formatting is and why you need it here: http://www.tuxera.com/formatting-an-ntfs-drive-using-a-mac/
Here’s how you format a drive using Tuxera Disk Manager:
About Tuxera NTFS for Mac
Tuxera NTFS for Mac and Tuxera Disk Manager work in the latest macOS and OS X 10.11 El Capitan. It’s backwards compatible and runs on all OS X versions starting from Tiger. Personal licensing allows you to install Tuxera NTFS for Mac on all your home computers with a single license.
Get Tuxera NTFS for Mac with Tuxera Disk Manager to get started:
Formatting a USB drive is an easy and straightforward process. However, there are some settings one needs to check before formatting it.
To enable NTFS on your USB Flash Drive drive (USB Flash Memory) click on My Computer (This PC) and select Manage.
Open the Device Manager and find your USB drive under the Disk Drives heading. Right-click the drive and select Properties.
Here’s what we are looking for. By default, the setting for formatting your drive is set to Quick Removal. With Quick Removal, you can remove your USB at any time without damaging your files on it. As long as you are not moving any data from or to it of course.
Better performance setting enables write caching in Windows. This means that you will have to use Safely Remove Hardware notification to disconnect your device safely.
Choose the setting you think it will suit your needs best and click OK.
Open My Computer > Select Format on the flash drive.
Choose NTFS in the File System drop-down box.
Click the Start button and wait until finished.
If you have formatted your USB using Better Performance policy to remove a device safely without data loss use a 'safely remove hardware' procedure or Eject function from Windows Explorer.
Windows Was Unable To Complete The Format/ Please Insert a Disk Into USB Drive Error.
If you have encountered this error while trying to format your USB have no worries we got you covered. The problem is that your USB device needs to be initialized which can be done quite easily with LSoft’s Boot Disk Creator which comes embedded within Active@ BootDisk.
Download and install Active@ BootDisk. After that, run Boot Disk Creator.
As you can see from our example Boot Disk Creator doesn’t see the USB drive. But fear not, click on Initialize Disk.
Bear in mind that performing disk initialization will delete all of the data on your drive!
A new small window should appear where you can see your previously invisible USB. Click on Start.
In a few moments, your USB should be Initialised.
Flash Drive Ntfs Format Error
Voilà! Boot Disk Creator has initialized and formatted your USB to NTFS format and it’s ready for use.