Mac Mini M1 cant see files or folder on external NTFs drive

I had the same issue on a M1 MacBook Air 2020 just now. When mounting the external NTFS disk, I could see a fraction of the actual files on disk. Terminal didn't give me anything as well.

I then installed the Paragon NTFS for Mac trial, which is quite involved... but with everything enabled, and Paragon NTFS all files finally showed up.

I suspect the NTFS driver that's built in to Mac is incomplete.

My invisible lost files were on a NTFS formatted drive. I could see almost all files, BUT all video and photo files were invisible. Natch, I freaked. Plugged the drive into my PC, and boom, they were back, visible. I could also see all the files on my older Big Sur mac air - it was just the M1 macbook that couldn't see them. I tested, copied the files to a exFat formatted drive. The M1 could see them! I am now in the process of copying 40 TBs of drives, created with my PC, over to drives formatted as exFat. The macbook with M1 does see them on a exFat drive. Mysteriously, it was only video and photo files that became invisible.

Is the external drive encrypted which would require the use of a third party proprietary driver?

Does the external drive have the ability to use its own power supply?

Is the drive connected directly to the Mini?

If the drive is connected directly to the Mini, then try connecting the drive to a good brand of powered USB3 hub instead which may provide more power to the external drive and also act as a filter & buffer.

Disconnect all other unnecessary external devices in case one of them is interfering.

Have you rebooted the Mini?

Are you using any anti-virus apps, cleaning apps, or third party security software that may be interfering?

It is best to let macOS manage the external drives. If the drive needs to be shared with Windows, then it is best to erase the external drive as GUID partition and exFAT, otherwise if the drive will only be used with macOS, then erase it as GUID partition and MacOS Extended (Journaled).

Well, I'm not sure the command lines will work on M1 chip based Mac computers. The M1 chip uses a different architecture and instruction set from Intel. It means that a lot of apps need to be redesigned to run natively on the ARM-based chip. I've used Paragon NTFS for Mac, and download like three programs. They weren't working unless they made an update. I haven’t had success until I used iBoysoft NTFS for Mac: https://iboysoft.com/ntfs-for-mac/. The only one I tried is fully compatible with the M1 chip and macOS Big Sur. However, it’s yearly rather than one time. If you are interested, you can try the software free for 7 days before buying it.

Hope it works for you.

MyApple8MyPC wrote:

pang275 wrote:

Hopefully the next software patch will resolve this issue.

There's nothing to "resolve".

M1 Macs need all hard drives to be formatted from the M1. If you formatted the drive from an intel Mac you will have issues.

That is absolutely not true for a data drive! If you want a bootable external USB drive for an M1 Mac, then yes you do need to properly partition and format the external drive for an M1 Mac. To use an external drive only for data does not require any changes to an external drive if an Intel Mac can access it.

The main problem with USB drives and the M1 Macs are that some USB controller chipsets used in the USB drives are just not compatible with an M1 Mac. Whether Apple or the drive manufacturers can resolve the issue with a software/firmware update to the Mac or the manufacturer updating the firmware on their USB drive is unknown.

Another possible issue here may be Big Sur having trouble reading an NTFS volume. I have seen multiple reports that hint at Big Sur having issues with NTFS volumes even on Intel Macs. To avoid any NTFS issues external drives should be formatted using a native macOS file system such as HFS+ (MacOS Extended (Journaled) ) or exFAT.

A user posted in another thread that there is an compatibility issue with certain USB controller chips on external drives and the M1 Macs. I don't have a link to that post, but I did stumble across a mention about the USB controller chip (especially older JMicron USB controllers) here on this product page for the Plugable external USB drive enclosure (see the bold section under "System Requirements"):

https://plugable.com/products/usbc-nvme/

Relevant section in the above link:

**Please note: Apple Mac systems with the M1 system are currently incompatible with the earlier JMicron version of this enclosure and may not function correctly. If you encounter any issues with an M1 Apple computer with this enclosure please contact our support team at support@plugable.com and we will be happy to help!

So there is a potential for two different issues here. One is a possible hardware compatibility issue with M1 Macs and some external USB drives and the other possible issue appears to be with the macOS NTFS driver in Big Sur. Erasing the external drive with Disk Utility to use a native macOS file system as suggested by myself and others will at least prevent the second issue.

It may be the external drive, adapter, or cable. Try using a good brand of a powered USB3 hub to connect the external drive.

Do you have any anti-virus apps, cleaning apps, or third party security software installed that may be interfering? Normally I would suggest running EtreCheck and posting the report here to look for possible software issues, but I'm not sure EtreCheck works with Big Sur or M1 Macs.

You do NOT need to install any third party software to view the contents of an NTFS formatted drive. You can try running chkdsk in Windows to make sure the NTFS volume is healthy. Do you have any advanced NTFS file system options enabled on Windows which may not be compatible with macOS?

I recommend temporarily transferring the contents of your NTFS drive to another location and using Disk Utility to erase the external drive as GUID partition and exFAT if you need to share the external drive with Windows. Having a file system that is native to both operating systems is the best alternative and safer for the smooth operation of macOS.

Dear,

I have too confirmed it from Apple. There will not be a solution to NTFS format. I will advice you to

1. Transfer all External HDD data to cloud (AWS or Azure) blob storage for a day or two. OR any other storage devices (laptop, old or internal HD)
2. Format your External HDD to exFAT file system which is compatible with both M1 and Intel.
3. egress your data back to your External HDD
4. Enjoy using the External HDD on Mac M1.

Let me know if it worked.

Cheers

Personally I use Paragon Software's NTFS driver with no issues (it is Big Sur compatible) on my M1 Mac mini. There's a 10-day free trial before you have to pay.

Save yourself the trouble and purchase a good commercial NTFS driver.

but in the future, NTFS should only be an option if you plan to work exclusively on Windows.

Using third party proprietary drivers always risks making your system more unstable and will at some point cause a problem after you install a macOS update which breaks the thrid party driver. Plus I've seen reports that the Paragon drivers are problematic even when they are working (both on macOS and Windows). That is why I am adamant against using them (as are other respected contributors on these forums).

The better and safer option is to have macOS manage the external drives. If you need to share a drive with Windows, then use Disk Utility to erase the drive as GUID partition and exFAT. If the drive only needs to be used with macOS, then erase the drive as GUID partition and MacOS Extended (Journaled).

It is concerning that the native macOS read-only NTFS Big Sur driver is not able to read the contents of the external drives. You may want to provide product feedback here:

https://www.apple.com/feedback/

The more practical solution would be https://www.paragon-software.com/home/ntfs-mac/

You have 10 days to try the software for free.

I've reported this bug to Apple as Feedback ID FB9007732.

Maybe create your own feedback in Feedback Assistant, if you have access to it, and reference my bug in your bug report, too. The more people report the issue, the more attention it gets.

Have the same issue with new M1 Mini. Some content on external NTFS appears in folders but not all. And when I try to copy content that I can see I mostly get 'error code -50'.

My solution was to download trial of Paragon Mac OS Extended for PC, and reformat the drive as such on the M1. Now I can use it but the NTFS implementation is still wrong!

Format your external HD to exFAT file. It will work in both windows and Mac.