How do I format my NTFS external drive to be write-able for Mac?

twinkick wrote:

I have an NTFS hard drive, I've been using them for my MacBook. However, the drive doesn't write when I use a Mac PC. And also I tried to install macOS Big Sur, but since my MacBook storage is low, I wanted to use my external drive but wasn't allowed to.

Is there any way I can format my external drive without losing the data? I can't transfer the data to my MacBook since my MacBook storage is too low. And I don't have any other external drive to transfer to.

https://discussions.apple.com/content/attachment/c4bbac6b-fc28-4330-8d81-3fd5670da521

Third party ...software to r/w to NTFS

tuxera

http://www.tuxera.com/products/tuxera-ntfs-for-mac/

Paragon

http://www.paragon-software.com/home/ntfs-mac/

there are others:

https://github.com/osxfuse/osxfuse/wiki/NTFS-3G

https://iboysoft.com/mac-drive-manager/ntfs-for-mac/free-software-read-write-ntfs-mac.html

https://iboysoft.com/ntfs-for-mac/wd-ntfs-driver-for-mac.html

When you format a drive the data on it is lost. You have to copy off the data, format the drive, then copy the data back onto the newly formatted drive.