- For me, it’s always done what it said on the box, and now with V14 it’s got El Capitan compatibility, so no complaints here. If you’re looking for a way to have plug-and-play NTFS drives on your mac, there really isn’t a better alternative to Microsoft NTFS for Mac by Paragon Software. Highly recommended for all Mac users!
- Microsoft NTFS for Mac by Tuxera brings reliable read-write compatibility for all NTFS-formatted USB drives on your Mac. Try free for 15 days.
Check compatibility
You can upgrade to OS X El Capitan from OS X Snow Leopard or later on any of the following Mac models. Your Mac also needs at least 2GB of memory and 8.8GB of available storage space.
MacBook introduced in 2009 or later, plus MacBook (13-inch, Aluminum, Late 2008)
MacBook Air introduced in late 2008 or later
MacBook Pro introduced in mid 2007 or later
Mac mini introduced in early 2009 or later
iMac introduced in mid 2007 or later
Mac Pro introduced in early 2008 or later
Xserve models introduced in early 2009
Jan 25, 2016 The trick to making the process work on El Capitan is disabling the System Integrity Protection What Mac Users Need To Know About El Capitan Security Security is the biggest change to OS X 10.11 El Capitan. OS X is now so locked down even root users can't modify the operating system – let's go over what that means, shall we?
To find your Mac model, memory, storage space, and macOS version, choose About This Mac from the Apple menu . If your Mac isn't compatible with OS X El Capitan, the installer will let you know.
Make a backup
Before installing any upgrade, it’s a good idea to back up your Mac. Time Machine makes it simple, and other backup methods are also available. Learn how to back up your Mac.
Get connected
It takes time to download and install OS X, so make sure that you have a reliable Internet connection. If you're using a Mac notebook computer, plug it into AC power.
Download OS X El Capitan
For the strongest security and latest features, find out whether you can upgrade to macOS Catalina, the latest version of macOS.
If you still need OS X El Capitan, use this link: Download OS X El Capitan. A file named InstallMacOSX.dmg will download to your Mac.
Install the macOS installer
Double-click the downloaded file to open a window showing its contents. Then double-click the file within, named InstallMacOSX.pkg.
Follow the onscreen instructions, which will guide you through the steps necessary to install.
Begin installation
After installation of the installer is complete, open the Applications folder on your Mac, then double-click the file named Install OS X El Capitan.
Click Continue and follow the onscreen instructions. You might find it easiest to begin installation in the evening so that it can complete overnight, if needed.
Allow installation to complete
Please allow installation to complete without putting your Mac to sleep or closing its lid. Your Mac might restart, show a progress bar, or show a blank screen several times as it installs both OS X and related updates to your Mac firmware.
Learn more
- OS X El Capitan won't install on top of a later version of macOS, but you can erase your disk first or install on another disk.
- You can use macOS Recovery to reinstall macOS.
NTFS support in OS X is disappointing. You plug in a USB flash drive from a co-worker who uses Windows to simply copy over a file, only to realize that you can't actually write to NTFS-formatted drives on Mac out of the box.
That's kind of lame, to be honest. It's 2016, Apple, wake up! People who work together in the same office, on different operating systems, should be able to exchange files via USB flash drive with ease, without having to worry about formatting their drives with a cross-platform filesystem, like exFAT.
Solutions
There are a few ways to enable NTFS write support on OS X.
- Using the built-in NTFS drivers - Writing to NTFS drives is a functionality that's been built into OS X for some time. However, it's disabled by default for NTFS volumes, and for good reason. It's extremely buggy and corrupts entire volumes in certain situations. I tried copying 4GB worth of data to an NTFS volume this way, and the transfer just failed half-way, rendering the disk inaccessible and my computer unbootable, until I manually disconnected the SATA cable from the hard drive. Luckily, hot-plugging the drive to Windows 7 and running
dskchk
fixed the issue, but other people reported losing all of their data because of these faulty drivers. Therefore, I strongly advise against this method. - Purchasing Tuxera/Paragon NTFS for Mac - A viable option, albeit quite expensive (Tuxera - $26.50, Paragon - $19.95), at least for something that should already be included with the OS. I shouldn't have to pay good money to be able to write to an NTFS volume. There has to be another way.
- Downloading and installing OSXFUSE and NTFS-3G - The winning option. NTFS-3G is an NTFS read/write driver that is free and open-source, and there don't seem to be any corruption issues arising from using it.
Installing OSXFUSE
So, what is OSXFUSE anyway?
FUSE for OS X allows you to extend OS X's native file handling capabilities via third-party file systems. As a user, installing the OSXFUSE software package will let you use any third-party file system written atop OSXFUSE or MacFUSE, if you choose to install the MacFUSE compatibility layer.
Ntfs Driver For Mac
So basically, it's a way for developers to extend OS X's native file handling APIs to other file systems.
It's required by NTFS-3G, so let's go ahead and install the latest OSXFUSE (3.x.x) from here:
https://github.com/osxfuse/osxfuse/releases
Download the latest osxfuse-3.x.x.dmg
attachment, mount it, and install it, as with any other .dmg
.
Note: Make sure to select the MacFUSE Compatibility Layer in the installation options. NTFS-3G depends on it.
Installing NTFS-3G
Once that's done, we can go ahead and install NTFS-3G. But not so fast, we need Homebrew for that.
Verify that you have Homebrew installed by running:
If you don't, install it using this one-liner:
In any case, go ahead and update the Homebrew formula:
Next, let's finally install NTFS-3G via Homebrew:
Replacing Mount_NTFS
To get NTFS-3G to work, we need to replace the built-in /sbin/mount_ntfs
binary, which is linked to Apple's NTFS driver, with NTFS-3G's mount_ntfs
.
This was a pretty easy thing to do before OS X 10.11 El Capitan, but due to System Integrity Protection, it is now slightly harder.
System Integrity Protection is a security technology in OS X El Capitan that's designed to help prevent potentially malicious software from modifying protected files and folders on your Mac.
It restricts the root account and limits the actions that the root user can perform on protected parts of OS X.
Therefore, we can't simply swap out the binary by using sudo
and running ln
. That is, not until we disable System Integrity Protection.
Disabling SIP
Reboot your Mac, and hold Cmd + R to enter Recovery mode. Within the Terminal, enter the following command to disable SIP and reboot back into OS X:
Replacing the Binary Link
Boot into OS X, and open a Terminal window. Within the Terminal, enter the following commands to swap out the link to the native mount_ntfs
binary with a link to NTFS-3G's mount_ntfs
binary:
Re-enabling SIP
Reboot into Recovery mode again, this time, to re-enable SIP. Within the Terminal, enter the following command to enable SIP and reboot back into OS X:
That's It!
Seagate Ntfs Driver For Windows
NTFS-3G will automatically mount your NTFS volumes in read-and-write mode once you reboot back into OS X. Go ahead and copy some files over to an NTFS volume to make sure it works. Well done!