You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you might find, you get what you need. – The Rolling Stones
I’m not a huge fan of making technical posts; there are a lot of people a lot smarter than me when it comes to most of these topics. Every now and then though there is so much wrong information out there that I don’t mind dipping my toe in Nerd Lake.
Despite what you may have heard or read, it is possible to move files from a Mac to an NTFS-formatted (PC) external hard drive. That being said, in Steve Jobs’ infinite wisdom, NTFS drives are not natively supported by Apple computers.
You’re going to have to follow these steps to make the your computer work like it should:
- Disconnect the external hard drive from the Mac
- Download and Install MacFuse (website)
- Download and Install NTFS-3G for Mac (website)
- Restart your computer
- Plug in your external hard drive.
- Start moving files
That’s about as straight forward as it gets. Usually with Macs, they just work like you think they should. This is one of those rare cases where they just don’t. Hope this post saves you the headache I had.