Instead of pointing and clicking, you can format a hard drive to NTFS by typing in command prompts and your Mac will respond. Mac Terminal is the default gateway to all command lines on your Mac. Although Mac has a drive management tool named Disk Utility to perform multiple tasks on your flash drive, including First Aid, Erase, and Partition, there's no NTFS option when you choose the file system when reformatting.įortunately, it's possible to change the format of your flash drive to NTFS on Mac with Terminal. Since NTFS is a proprietary file system owned by Windows, macOS can't natively format your flash drive to NTFS. Can you format a drive to NTFS on Mac? Read on to know more. One thing that can't be avoided when talking about NTFS on Mac is compatibility.

By using the MFT log, users can easily keep and audit the log of the files on the drives.Īside from the above advantages, NTFS has more to explore. Users can set permissions on certain files and folders to enhance data security. NTFS allows you to compress files and enjoy larger storage capacity on your flash drives. It's a procedure that Windows OS uses to organize, store, manage, and find files on your external flash drives.Īs the default file system of Windows OS, the NTFS file system enjoys a bunch of benefits compared to other similar formats. NTFS (NT file system), also called the New Technology File System, is a proprietary file system introduced by Microsoft with the release of Windows NT 3.1. Bonus: How to read-write NTFS drive on Mac without formatting How to format drive to NTFS on Mac Using NTFS for Mac tool How to format drive to NTFS on Mac Using Terminal

Before that, let's dive in to see what is NTFS format exactly.

This post will walk you through all possible methods to format drive to NTFS on Mac with step-by-step tutorials. If you need to format a flash drive to NTFS on Mac, you've come to the right place. While exFAT and FAT32 are popular between both Windows operating system and macOS, NTFS is less compatible since it only fully works on Windows PC. Oftentimes, when you have a new flash drive, it's formatted with different file systems, including common ones such as exFAT, FAT32, and NTFS.

How to format usb stick in ntfs on mac