If reformatting your NTFS drive for Mac is not an option, you can enable write support for specific Windows disks using macOS Terminal. From now on you’ll be able to move files to your drive and edit them in place from a Mac or PC. Read the warning carefully before proceeding, as this process will delete any existing data on the drive. Enter a new name for the drive in the field above if you wish.Ĭlick ‘Erase’ to continue. Insert your NTFS drive or USB stick and click to highlight the disk name in the white box on the left-hand side of the window.

To get started, click the Spotlight icon at the top right of your screen and enter ‘Disk’ to launch Disk Utility. More information on FAT32 versus NTFS is available from Microsoft Support (opens in new tab). This may pose a problem if you’re using the drive to store high-quality videos. This is simple to do and means the data on your drive/USB stick can be read and written on both Macs and PCs.īe aware that the FAT32 format isn’t as efficient as NTFS: it only supports files sizes of up to 4GB. Each bay may have its own external interface, or the drives may be routed through a RAID controller and presented to the Mac using a single interface.If you have an NTFS drive you can use macOS’ Disk Utility to reformat it to FAT32.

The external interfaces available include USB 2, USB 3, FireWire, eSATA (and other SATA types), and Thunderbolt. They usually hold 3.5-inch drives, but many also support SSDs. Multi-bay enclosures range from holding two drives to holding 16 or more drives. Multi-bay enclosures: This type of enclosure uses multiple bays or docks.This type of enclosure usually has its own power supply. External interfaces include USB 2, USB 3, FireWire, eSATA, and Thunderbolt. In some cases, two SSDs can be installed in this enclosure size. 3.5-inch external enclosures: Used with the standard hard drives and SSDs found in most desktop computers.The enclosures can be bus-powered or have their own power supplies.

Common interface options include USB 2, USB 3, and eSATA. Performance depends mostly on the type of external interface used to connect the enclosure to the Mac.

2.5-inch external enclosures: Designed for use with the types of hard drives and SSDs commonly installed in laptop computers.

This type of enclosure should perform as well as any other external device that uses the same type of computer interface. Power is usually supplied by the interface bus (USB or FireWire), but some enclosures use external power supplies (wall warts).

1.8-inch external enclosures: Designed to hold a single 1.8-inch hard drive or SSD.

The downside is their slowness, especially when you're writing data to them.

USB flash drives: Small, portable, and relatively inexpensive, these house capacities ranging from 2 GB to 2 TB.

Macbook support external hard disk