What is NTFS good for? I installed it a number of years ago (can't remember why) but have not consciously used it recently. However, I notice there is a process "Paragon NTFS for Mac 15" running.
I am using a non-Apple drive as second backup drive for Time Machine. Would NTFS have something to do with this? What would happen if I removed the Application? Etrecheck flags it as problematic.
iMac 21.5", macOS 10.14
NTFS is a format used by Windows computers. If you are using an external drive formatted for Windows you would need a third party app that enables your Mac to write to the NTFS formatted drive. Paragon NTFS is one such app. If you are not using a NTFS formatted drive you do not need Paragon NTFS.
NTFS is a format used by Windows computers. If you are using an external drive formatted for Windows you would need a third party app that enables your Mac to write to the NTFS formatted drive. Paragon NTFS is one such app. If you are not using a NTFS formatted drive you do not need Paragon NTFS.
The only thing it's good for on a Mac is so you can share the drive with Windows, with both having read/write access. But you can do the same thing without Paragon NTFS by formatting the drive from Windows as ExFAT. Both computers will still have read/write access, and neither will need any type of third party software to do it.
It's also possible you installed it so you could write to a Windows partition you created with Boot Camp.
If you're not sharing anything with Windows, then you don't need it at all.
Thanks. My secondary backup drive is formatted as Mac OS Extended.
I am wondering why an NTFS process is running when I am not using it. The "user" for the processes seems to be the currently active account. If I switch users, the user of the process also switches.
I would suggest removing it, unless you really are moving disks between Windows and macOS.
and then I would take Kurt Lang advice and reformat the shared drives as exFAT (assuming you can safely move the data to someplace else as the reformat to exFAT will delete all existing data on an NTFS Windows file system)
NTFS is short for ew Technology File System. Used mostly for Windows. Supposedly Apple can read but not write to it unless you install a third party APP. Just right click the external drive and see "get info" and see what format the drive is. Most are Apple extended OS unless a SSD.
It's running because it is there, waiting patiently, for you to plug in an NTFS formatted drive so it can allow you to write to the drive.
Paragon NTFS
