So far it is considered that mounting NTFS means opening an NTFS formatted drive in Mac operating system. But it is not true. Have you ever thought that opening a drive in Windows is not called “Mounting a drive”? To explain it technically, the mounting process is not done by the hardware process of the PC. In Mac based operating systems before the boot of any storage devices by the PC the user or the operating system has to mount the storage drives using mount point and file systems. Moreover the operating system cannot be forced to open an uncategorized or unsupported format. So the mounting process will ensure that the requested drive is supported by the PC and the operating system.
In the case of mounting NTFS in Mac, the Mac operating systems do not give read / write permissions to the users because of legal issues or sometimes the read process alone will be permitted. But this New Technology File System will store additional information like files accessing time and date along with that data. So in NTFS even the read process will be considered as write process only.
Ultimately Mac is one of the leading big bosses in the operating system industry. But roughly around 70% of the people all over the world make use of Windows OS. Since no other file system is well suited for drive storages of larger size. It is the most used files system for many external drives as it also supports journaling files and that will be useful at the time of recovery of crashed data. Since the read and write process are merely same the Mac OS 10 x versions will not permit the drive to be mounted.
The NTFS comes under Microsoft developed one which is one of the legal obstacles for Mac OS to have legal permissions to boot and mount NTFS drive at startup or automatically. But the Mac OS from 10.3 x and later version has the options to perform read/write on NTFS drives and storage devices. The typical part lies in answering the question “How to mount a NTFS drive on Mac OS X”.
Also Read: Recover NTFS Permissions Of A Deleted File
Even though the Mac OS has this option it fails to initiate automatically. If the users want to use an NTFS drive in a Mac based pc then they have to remove the restriction to read/write either manually or by using a third party application. To do it manually the user needs some basic knowledge about working in a Mac terminal. Regarding using a third party applications for mounting NTFS drive in Mac the naïve user must need to choose between the free one and the paid one. One of the free one is Mac fuse, the other used tools are NTFS – 3g and paragon.
Actually what this applications do is they will fetch the memory as a normal application from the Mac OS memory. When the user prompts to open an NTFS drive using this application they will create a simulated environment in the back and also make use of a rearranged hash table. This helps to perform read/write operations in NTFS drive. But sometimes working with third party applications will be rigorous because the third party applications will convert the files from NTFS to HFS+ or HFSX. In certain times, the conversion will be troublesome. Like trying to access a compressed files of size 9 GB, there appears the application crash and the drive will be unreadable further.
When the same drive is used in the Windows operating system an error message will be received stating that “read / write error. Do you want to format the drive now?” If you have any important data on that particular drive, you may lose the same after forcibly formatting the drive. However, as far as data recovery is concerned, you can try to make use of good recovery software like Remo Recover Mac – Pro that has the option to retrieve files from formatted disk / drives. It is recommended as the best software in the market.
6 thoughts on “How to mount a NTFS drive on Mac OS X ?”
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I didn’t think the Mac gods (or geniuses) allowed Mac users to change or upgrade hardware parts. The way the Mac culture is devised, their users are brain washed into thinking that it is better than Windows, but the reality is that Macs have just as many problems and vulnerabilities as any Windows system, but because they tend to conceal their OS code and the way they encourage you to take your system to a Mac store, users never know it.
If I understood this article correctly, it surprises me because I had no idea that the NTFS file system / structure was a part of the Mac structure. I have never owned a Mac computer, just Windows computers for years. So that is how I know about the FAT 32 and NTFS file systems.
This has been very helpful I was looking at this the other day and this is something I was having a problem with so I am glad that you posted this. Keep up the good work and don’t stop posting this stuff because it is very helpful. I love the look of your site and you did a very good job with the content. The more you post the more I will learn.
Thank you for this I have been looking for anything and everything I could find on the Mac so that I can get up to speed before they make the office an entirely Mac operating system. I will add this to my book that I am putting together because if I know them there won’t be any training and we will have to learn this on our own.
I never thought about doing this until I read the title of your blog post and then I had to read the article because it really peaked my interest in how this would work. My buddy will like this idea as well so I will be sure to share your work with him. You did a great job putting this together and I hope that you will be posting more in the next few days.
I just got my mac so I am not quite ready for something this detailed but this is good work I am looking forward to trying this after I play with it and figure out all the bugs it has and what I need to change. Keep up the good work though because I am saving all of your posts that will help me later to get things up and working properly.