Should I use "NTFS for Mac" or reformat the drive? Confused, PLEASE HELP!

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Should I use "NTFS for Mac" or reformat the drive? Confused, PLEASE HELP!

So I recently purchased a Seagate 4TB External Hard Drive for the sole purpose of backing up my photos/videos/music from my MacBook. The HD came formatted NTFS (not really sure what that entails) and there was a "NTFS For Mac" software that was included. From my understanding the software is supposed to help me transfer things from Windows to Mac freely. BUT I only have Macs, and I doubt I'll ever need a file from anything windows. With that being said, wouldn't it just be better to ditch the "NTFS For Mac" software since I won't ever use windows? It seems counterintuitive to keep the HD formatted as a Windows HD where I need a software to use it on my Mac, when in actuality I'll never use it on windows. Shouldn't I just reformat the HD to be 100% Mac formatted or is there something I'm missing? I'm pretty good with technology but I'm not an expert. Any advice is greatly appreciated! Thanks

MacBook Pro 15", macOS 10.14

Posted on May 10, 2019 2:17 PM

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Answer 1

May 12, 2019 7:58 AM in response to dechaunte24

Also, DO NOT install any "drivers" or software that is suggested to install.

The drivers are not needed and installing them will only cause all sorts of

unexplained actions from at best, unreliable mounting of file reads and

writes and at worst outright data loss.

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Answer 2

May 13, 2019 2:58 AM in response to dechaunte24

If you will only use the drive on Macs then yes reformat it to a Mac format.

Seagate ship it formatted as NTFS because that works best for Windows. They also provide a version of NTFS for Mac to allow the drive to be shared between Windows and Mac. As you will not be sharing the drive you don't need to worry about this.

Note: I strongly suspect the version of NTFS for Mac included with the drive is out-of-date. This could cause a problem because it may not be sufficiently compatible with newer Mac operating system versions. It looks like Seagate may be doing the right thing and offering updates from their website to address this.

See - https://www.seagate.com/gb/en/support/kb/will-my-seagate-drive-work-with-macos-1014-mojave-007859en/

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Answer 3

May 10, 2019 2:31 PM in response to dechaunte24

Format the drive for your Mac. There is no need to keep the drive formatted NTFS for Windows then use a third party app, NTFS for Mac, in order to use the drive.

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Should I use "NTFS for Mac" or reformat the drive? Confused, PLEASE HELP!

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