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212rikanmofo

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Jan 31, 2003
1,896
724
I bought a Seagate backup drive (USB3) that's pre-formatted in NTFS, I have been using it with my Windows machine and my NAS. But when I connect it to my Mac, it doesn't detect it.

I've had numerous external HDD's in the past that can be both used on Mac and Windows without any problems. So not sure why this isn't working.
 

leman

macrumors Core
Oct 14, 2008
19,494
19,632
Yes, it can work with an external drive, but OS X can't write to NTFS without a third-party driver. If your drive is not detected, there might be some hardware issue. Does it show up in Disk Utility?
 

h9826790

macrumors P6
Apr 3, 2014
16,656
8,587
Hong Kong
Tested on my Mac with an external HDD RAID array in NTFS format. No problem at all, however, same as previous OSX, NTFS partition will be read only, unless you install 3rd party driver.

Due to Sierra still a very new OS, actually it's still beta (even though it's GM). It's possible that the bug is nothing related to NTFS, but the USB driver.
 

212rikanmofo

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Jan 31, 2003
1,896
724
Strange, perhaps something is wrong with my HDD, sigh... because when I plug it into windows, it detects it, but theres some errors on the drive and I can't even perform a repair on it... however the files are still accessible and writeable. Do you guys know why I can't repair the drive? Would a reformat fix that?
 

leman

macrumors Core
Oct 14, 2008
19,494
19,632
If there are any important files on there, make sure you have a backup (and also do an integrity check). Reformat might help, but it is also possible that the HDD is dying.
 

h9826790

macrumors P6
Apr 3, 2014
16,656
8,587
Hong Kong
Strange, perhaps something is wrong with my HDD, sigh... because when I plug it into windows, it detects it, but theres some errors on the drive and I can't even perform a repair on it... however the files are still accessible and writeable. Do you guys know why I can't repair the drive? Would a reformat fix that?

Hard to tell, worth to try, however, if SMART report your HDD has problem, you better backup everything and get a new one ASAP.

HDD failure not always reported by SMART, but if SMART report a problem, 99% your HDD is failing.
 
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