After my old HP Windows desktop crashed, I decided to move to a Mac computer to have a fresh start. However, the first frustration I had was to find that I couldn’t write anything to my Windows NTFS-formatted external hard drives on Mac. I did a little homework and realized that NTFS file system is not fully compatible with macOS. macOS doesn’t allowing writing to NTFS drives.
Luckily, there are options for people like me to use NTFS drives on Mac. Using third-party NTFS for Mac drivers is the easiest and safest as far as I know.
iBoysoft Drive Manager
iBoysoft Drive Manager is a drive management tool for Mac users. It is built with an NTFS driver for mac, which can enable you have full read-write access to NTFS drives on Mac. Additionally, it can manage removable drives including USB flash drives, SD cards, memory sticks and external hard drives altogether. It supports adding network drives and mapping them as local drives as well.
Tech Specifications:
Supported OS: macOS 10.14/10.13/10.12 and Mac OS X 10.11/10.10/10.9/10.8/10.7.
Supported file system: NTFS, APFS, HFS, HFS+, FAT, FAT32, exFAT.
How to use iBoysoft Drive Manager
To manage NTFS drives and other external disks using iBoysoft Drive Manager:
Step 1: Download, install and launch iBoysoft Drive Manager on Mac.
Step 2: Connect NTFS drives or other external drives to the Mac. You will see notifications telling you that disks are mounted successfully.
Step 3: You can make changes to stored files on NTFS drives and other external drives after they are opened in the Finder automatically.
Step 4: Unmount NTFS drives or other external drives by clicking the button beside the drive one at a time. “Mount All External Drives” and “Unmount All External Drives” options are available too.
To manage network drives efficiently using iBoysoft Drive Manager:
Step 1: Click on the iBoysoft Drive Management icon at the top right menu bar.
Step 2: Click on the + button at the top right corner in the top-down interface.
Step 3: Input the server address, user name and password.
Step 4: Click on Connect button.
Step 5: Disconnect the network drives by clicking the button beside the network drives one at a time. “Connect All Network Drives” and “Disconnect All Network Drives” options are available too.
iBoysoft Drive Manager also has customizable drive management settings to better meet your needs:
Step 1: Click on the iBoysoft Drive Management icon at the top right menu bar.
Step 2: Click on the menu at the top left corner in the top-down interface and choose Preferences….
Step 3: You will see “General”, “Notifications”, and “Advanced” at the toolbar. All settings in the window are checked by default and you can uncheck them as you like.
The advantages of using iBoysoft Drive Manager
Have full read-write access to NTFS drives on Mac
If you are going to transfer files between PCs and Macs using an external drive, it is better to format a drive with FAT, FAT32 or exFAT file system. It is because both Windows and macOS have full read-write support to them. However, with iBoysoft Drive Manager, there is no need to reformat your NTFS to FAT, FAT32 or exFAT at all. It saves you a lot of time to back up the disks, reformat them and restore data to the disks.
Manage multiple external drives at the same time
I use different portable storage media for different devices and end up with multiple disks in hands. Before I came cross the incompatibility problem between NTFS and macOS, I was looking for a tool to help me manage them in one place. iBoysoft Drive Manager fits in my need perfectly because it is such a tool that supports all common devices and file systems.
Manage multiple network drives at the same time
It supports manually adding FTP and FSTP network drives. They will look like physical external drives in the Finder. I didn’t know how convenient it is for me to access my network drives until I have tried this feature. I don’t have to enter password again and again every time I want to open the network drives.
Protect the external drives and network drives better
By default, the software will automatically disconnect network drives and unmount external drivers when the Mac sleeps. This can protect external drives from corruption and protect network drives from unauthorized access. If you want to better protect the external drives and network drives, you can choose to mount or connect them manually when the Mac wakes up instead of mounting or connecting them automatically.
Conclusion
For people who have to use NTFS drives for sharing files between Windows machine and macOS computers, using an NTFS driver for macOS is the best option. It is so easy to use that it seems NTFS write support exists natively in macOS.
iBoysoft Drive Manager stands out because of its powerful disk management abilities. It can mount NTFS drives in read-write mode automatically and manage multiple external/network drives with great efficiency.
