Best software for NTFS on Mac?

Wow, the replies here are SO not helpful... you ask about bananas and get orange answers. lol

Anyway, I've been using Paragon's NTFS driver, without a hiccup for ages. The build-in read only driver seems to be not only faster at reading but lighter as well, so I only use it when I need it. There is also a preferences panel for it where you can turn the driver on or off on the fly.

For me the only little inconvenience using this product is that I use the /etc/fbtab to prevent the Windoze partition from auto-mounting, so when the driver is on the disk "loses" its GUID. If the driver is on at boot the Windoze partition will mount. I guess I could use the name for it, but it is a minor thing.

In the event of any trouble, uninstalling is quite easy and can be done using the preferences pane uninstall button or via terminal using pkgutil. I always prefer using the terminal to uninstall pkgs, as I don't like leftovers. Needless to say, extreme care should always be taken when removing files with root privileges. You can list all pkgs installed by issuing a:

pkgutil --pkgs

Then list all the files for the package (paragon's ntfs in the example below):

pkgutil --files com.paragon-software.filesystems.NTFS.pkg

As you can see below the output will show you all the files the package's install script wrote.

 mach [~] $ pkgutil --files com.paragon-software.filesystems.NTFS.pkg

Library

Library/Application Support

Library/Application Support/Paragon Software

Library/Application Support/Paragon Updater

Library/Application Support/Paragon Updater/Paragon Updater.app

Library/Application Support/Paragon Updater/Paragon Updater.app/Contents

AND SO ON....

Then you can delete them manually via Finder or using the terminal. Be careful not to break your system, please. After deleting the files and directories you can finally remove the receipt for the package:

sudo pkgutil --forget

Because previous posts made it relevant! It is how a good thread should go, with answers to the question (instead of dodges) and relevant information.

Here:

dwb wrote:

I agree with Allan, the best choice is to avoid using an NTFS drive with a Mac. The problem I’ve found with the various NTFS drivers is that when Apple releases a new OS version (and sometimes just a security update) it breaks the driver leaving me an unusable driver

As I said, I've been using for AGES without any problems.

I second this!

First of all, please keep it on-topic there is enough useless information to be found elsewhere so lets not fill the apple support forums with it 😎

Then.. I have been using Paragon NTFS since 2008 when I bought my MacBook (still up and running 🙂).

I tried Tuxera a long time ago and I did have problems with that one so my advice would also be to use Paragon.

There are more (also free) options to consider for that I am going to point you to howtogeek.com, this article covers all available options I know (and didn't know 😉) https://www.howtogeek.com/236055/how-to-write-to-ntfs-drives-on-a-mac/

Be sure to check out this part of the guide! 😉

"If you have a Seagate drive you want to write to, be aware that Seagate offers a free download of Paragon NTFS for Mac so you won’t have to purchase anything extra."

Good luck!

Unless you are physically using the drive primarily for windows and you need windows permissions on then NTFS offers only restrictions in OS X. You are relying on 3rd party solutions to force a Microsoft protocol to work in OS X when other, better solutions are available.

Most of the ones I tried in the past were already suggested here, but as mentioned above, they stop working often.

That's why we wrote Mirvago NTFS Mac Mounter, which will work with all Mac OS operating systems, and security patches will not break it. A free trial is offered, so give it a try 🙂

Disclaimer: we are the proud authors of this software, and we humbly recommend it to the community's users.

the two you mention are the best and they don't really work.
Unless you need an R/W/X NFTS solution connected directly to your Mac you should avoid NTFS for OS X and use something else like Mac Extended or EXFat if you boot to windows on that device, otherwise you are looking into a solution that is not supported by the OS and up to the developers to keep it maintained.

Another option is to use BootCamp to run a copy Windows directly from your Mac. Then use Window's native NTFS capability to read & write to NTFS-formatted drives.

My suggestion is not to use NTFS on the Mac. Even using third party software to be able to write to the disk formatted as NTFS, there are always problems with it. Many of the Apple software packages don't work correctly when used with disks that are formatted as NTFS.

I agree with Allan, the best choice is to avoid using an NTFS drive with a Mac. The problem I’ve found with the various NTFS drivers is that when Apple releases a new OS version (and sometimes just a security update) it breaks the driver leaving me an unusable driver, disk corruption, or instability of my Mac. For a time I chose to use exFAT as my cross compatible drive format. Today I don’t bother. I use one external drive for my Mac and another for my PC. If I need to move files from one platform to another today I use DropBox. (Any other cloud solution that supports the Mac and Windows would work.)

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

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

I still stand by my original suggestion to not use NTFS unless forced to do that. Generally there are plenty of solutions to get around using NTFS on a Mac.

So good you had to include directions for getting rid of it?

Good luck with that.

My advice is to throw NTFS out with the trash and formal your drives for a Mac, Windows mistakes not needed here.

Seagate drives can be reformatted to HFS+ so that you don't have to use any of the crappy software from Seagate.