Top 10 mac Articles| Paragon Software Group Blog mac Tips and Tricks

Redistributing free space on NTFS partitions has never been easier!

Paragon Software Group has released a new edition of Paragon CampTune, a utility for redistribution of disk space between HFS+ or APFS (Apple File System) and NTFS partitions on macOS systems.

With just one slider, dual-boot users can instantly allocate more disk space to either macOS or Windows operating systems. Paragon CampTune is the first Paragon macOS product to support Apple’s APFS. The update also offers a host ofnew features, including System Integrity Protection (SIP) management, which allows users to selectively disable individual parameters for this security option.

Paragon CampTune is available for $19.95 at https://www.paragon-software.com/home/camptune/ Current Paragon Camptune X users can buy an upgrade to Paragon CampTune with a 50% discount.

When one is not enough, get five!

We are proud to release Paragon UFSD (Universal File System Driver) Value Pack – a bundle of five essential cross-platform tools: NTFS for Mac, ExtFS for Mac, HFS+ for Windows, ExtFS for Windows, and NTFS-HFS Converter, powered with Lifetime UPGRADE ASSURANCE for each product in the bundle.

The UFSD Value Pack has been developed for users working with multiple operating systems to instantly solve compatibility issues. The UFSD Value Pack comes with a lifetime free upgrade guarantee, and is available for just $49.95 — a savings of nearly $100 compared to purchasing the included tools separately. For existing Paragon NTFS for Mac 14 customers, the UFSD Value Pack is available for just $19.95 in their personal MyParagon accounts. For all users with NTFS for Mac 12 version and lower the final bundle price is $24.95. Check out your offer now >>

Paragon UFSD Value Pack includes:

Paragon NTFS for Mac^® 14: Full, ultra-fast read/write access to NTFS partitions under macOS.

Paragon ExtFS for Mac^® 10: Full read and write access to Ext2/3/4 partitions under macOS with data transfer rate similar to native file system performance. The same driver also checks, repairs, creates, and formats Ext2/3/4 volumes.

Paragon HFS+ for Windows^® 11: The only solution with full access to HFS+ partitions on disks of any type (GPT, MBR), with higher transfer rates than native HFS file-system performance.

Paragon ExtFS for Windows^®: Fast and transparent access to Ext2/Ext3/Ext4 partitions under Windows; read and write support for LVM (Logical Volume Management).

Paragon NTFS-HFS Converter: Converts NTFS volumes to HFS+ and vice-versa, with a backup option.

Paragon UFSD Value Pack includes the essential tools for unprecedented high-performance read and write access to NTFS, HFS+, and ExtFS partitions from macOS or Windows-based systems. With Paragon UFSD Value Pack installed, dual-boot users can easily write files to NTFS-formatted USB flash drives, SSDs, or traditional hard drives, and copy data to NAS-based storage from a macOS-based computer.

All these products come with lifetime free upgrade guarantee, which means free upgrades for all included tools delivered directly to the user’s personal MyParagon account, plus free online support!

Paragon UFSD Value Pack is available here for $49.95.

Still have questions? Check this detailed support FAQ!

ReFS Support added to Paragon Universal File System Drivers

Resilient File System (ReFS) was first introduced by Microsoft Corporation in the release of Microsoft Server 2012. Since then support of this file system has been integrated into Microsoft server and desktop operating systems like Windows 8/8.1, Windows 10, Server 2016 (Technical Preview).

ReFS was designed with one key goal in mind – file system integrity and the ability to verify and auto-correct data without need to run a separate file system checking utility.

To provide better NTFS file system compatibility for existing applications, Microsoft is using the same API for implementing file system semantics: “This code implements the file system interface (read, write, open, close, change notification, etc.), maintains in-memory file and volume state, enforces security, and maintains memory caching and synchronization for file data. This reuse ensures a high degree of compatibility with the features of NTFS that we’re carrying forward”.

Unfortunately even with the upper-layer engine nearly identical to what’s found in NTFS, up until now, only Microsoft platforms provided access to ReFS volumes; as a result, a Windows PC or a virtual machine running a supported Windows operating system would still be required to open files on Refs volumes from other platforms such as Linux, Mac, etc.

Paragon Software’s development team has been working on integrating ReFS file system support into our UFSD (Universal File System Driver) technology since 2012. We are happy to announce the present result of this work and release a Paragon UFSD driver that supports working with Refs volumes in read-only mode (full solution with both read and write support is under active development).

Introduction to the Paragon ReFS Universal File System Driver

1. Create a ReFS volume on Windows Server 2012 platform:

2. Mount a ReFS volume on Linux:

3. Copy data from ReFS on Linux:

As you can see, with the help of the Paragon ReFS driver anyone can make a copy of their data from the ReFS volume on a Linux platform, without need for a Windows PC.

ReFS Compatibility within the Microsoft Ecosystem

With the release of Microsoft Server 2016 Technical Preview versions, Microsoft has shown that it continues to develop the ReFS file system. The newest ReFS version implemented into the Server 2016 Technical Preview 5 revision is not currently compatible with the previous Microsoft platforms, like Windows Server 2012 R2.

Attaching a ReFS volume from Windows Server 2012 to Windows Server 2016 (Technical Preview 5) – the ReFS volume is recognized:

ReFS is now ready for your Read-Only workloads. If you want to to take advantage of this new technology, please contact Paragon’s sales team at sales@paragon-software.com.

How to verify, repair or format NTFS partitions under Mac OS X 10.11 El Capitan. Quick troubleshooting guide

Since the release of Mac OS X 10.11 El Capitan, Paragon Software Сustomer Service have received over a 1000 requests concerning the verify/repair/format disk utility options, which disappeared from the Disk Utility in OS X 10.11 El Capitan. To address this issue, we integrated the functionality directly to NTFS for Mac Preference Pane.

Additionally we have recently released a new professional maintenance tool, Paragon Hard Disk Manager for Mac, to help you perform these basic and numerous advanced file system and volume partitioning operations.

If you are in need of such a solution, you can try Paragon HDM for Mac now.

However, in this article we going to show you how to format, verify and repair NTFS volumes with built-in partitioning tools in NTFS for Mac 14 under Mac OS X 10.11 El Capitan.

Disk Utility vs. Third-Party Drivers

The El Capitan version of Disk Utility has been through major changes — both cosmetically and under the hood. Once you get used to the glossy new user interface, veteran users might notice Disk Utility no longer manages disks mounted by third-party drivers, at least not through the program’s graphical user interface. The reasons for the change don’t make a whole lot of sense to outsiders, especially when disks mounted by non-native drivers can still be mounted, formatted, or repaired by using the command-line diskutil.

In addition to the under the hood changes outlined above, the familiar NTFS for Mac preferences pane has been overhauled with version 14. Since Disk Utility can no longer be used to work with Windows-formatted volumes, NTFS for Mac 14 now includes built-in format, verify, and mount functionality.

In addition to Windows NTFS, other file systems supported by OS X can also be used with this preference pane — for example, if Paragon’s ExtFS for Mac driver is already installed on the same system, NTFS for Mac will also be able to format, verify, or mount Linux-native Ext2/3/4 disks as well.

Here’s what NTFS for Mac 14 looks like when launched:

In order to verify or format your NTFS or ExtFS volumes with Paragon drivers, you need to launch the app Preference Pane, select a volume and click “Verify” or “Erase”, depending on what operation you need.

NTFS for Mac 14 also fixes found file system errors during the volume verification process:

For those comfortable with Terminal, the same actions can also be performed with Paragon’s command-line utilities. Advanced users familiar with Unix will have access to additional options through this interface:

fsck_ufsd_NTFS finds and repairs errors on NTFS disks.

newfs_ufsd_NTFS formats a volume to NTFS.

mount_ufsd_NTFS mounts or unmounts NTFS disks.

Support of the Windows NT file system is automatically added to the command-line diskutil during installation of the NTFS for Mac driver.

In case you quite often need not only to verify and format NTFS volumes, but perform more advanced tasks, such as move, resize, copy or even undelete partitions formatted to HFS+, NTFS, ExtFS, FAT and exFAT, try the new Paragon Hard Disk Manager for Mac.

HDM for Mac is not just for backup — it’s a powerful application that covers all aspects of the computer’s life cycle, including drive partitioning, file system optimization and repair functions, data backup capabilities, and irreversible data wiping. It already works with macOS Sierra 10.12 Preview.

Paragon Hard Disk Manager for Mac has been finally released!

We decided to take the next step in our development and present you with our most expected product – Paragon Hard Disk Manager for Mac! Most of you are already familiar with Hard Disk Manager for Windows or even have it installed on your PC. Now, we release Paragon Hard Disk Manager for Mac!

We developed a product that includes all the tools the OS X user needs. Everything from what’s OS X is missing plus comprehensive functionality to easily manage your OS X systems, so once you start using HDM for Mac, you wouldn’t have to run across the web searching for additional programs to successfully manage your Mac. HDM for Mac covers it all!

Enjoy this new powerful Mac solution!

System Integrity Protection in OS X 10.11
El Capitan support;
Sector-level backup for best perfomance and backup/recovery speed;
Move, resize, undelete partitions and modify their properties;
- Migrate Windows OS from one Mac computer to another;
- - Format volumes in any of the common file systems (NTFS, HFS+, ExtFS, FAT 16/FAT 32 and exFAT);
  - And much more!

Learn more about Paragon Hard Disk Manager for Mac

We would like to thank our beta-testers and everyone who supported the project – with your help we were able to gather the most valuable feedback and develop a great new product!

Why do you need an extra partition on your Mac and how to create it

Today we’re going to talk about partitions. What is it anyway?

A partition is a specific area of a hard drive, which has a beginning and an ending point, and the space between those points equals the total amount of size the partition defines.

Sometimes people confuse a partition with a volume, but there is a big difference between the two.
A volume is a file system on a partition your Mac or PC can recognize. Common types of volumes include DVDs, hard drives, and partitions or sections of hard drives.

Practically any type of storage you use for your Mac (SSDs, hard drives, USB flash drives, etc.) can be divided into partitions. Each partition can use one of four formats compatible with OS X: HFS/HFS+ (simple and encrypted), ExFAT and FAT.

There are good reasons to split your device into multiple partitions. For example, you want to run multiple versions of OS X on your Mac; organize your data PC-style; manage your backups efficiently or run Windows on your Mac. Especially if you are a big fan of OS X and install all OS X beta-versions, it is strongly recommended by Apple to install all beta versions on a separate partitions, as they can truly ruin your Mac!

To partition a drive, we can use the Disk Utility – a built-in Mac program to manage your hard drives.

NB: Your data will be erased during the procedure, so be sure to back up the information first.

Step 1: Open the Disk Utility by searching for it via Spotlight or finding it in Applications > Utilities
Step 2: Select the storage device you want to partition from the left pane. The selected drive will appear in the right pane together with its details, such as location, the way it’s connected, and the partition map in use
Step 3: Select the drive and then click the Partition button in the Disk Utility’s Toolbar. You will see a drop-down panel displaying a pie chart of how the drive is currently divided
Step 4: To add a partition, click the plus (+) button right below the pie chart
Step 5: Enter a name for the volume in the Partition field to be displayed on your Mac’s desktop. Press Apply

You can also adjust the volume size by either entering its value in the text box, or by shifting a pie slice anchor in the required direction.

However, some errors might occur in the process, causing you to end up with an unallocated space on your disk unseen in the Disk Utility. An unallocated space is like a void on your hard drive you can’t detect and use with Mac’s inbuilt apps. The only way to manage such space is to use the Terminal, but it is rather complicated and may lead to corruption of files and partitions.

For such cases we have a card up our sleeve: The new Paragon Hard Disk Manager for Mac Preview helps you to easily manage this unallocated space and use it to create partitions, add the unallocated space to the existing partitions, resize free space between Mac OS and Bootcamp partitions and much more.

With HDM for Mac Preview you can resize your partitions in 3 clicks.

Click 1: Select the storage device you want to partition. Choose Move/Resize partition

Click 2: Shift the anchor to select the size you need. Press OK

Click 3: Press Apply Operations at the top right of the menu

As you can see from the screenshot below, Disk Utility won’t show full information about an unallocated space on your storage device:

With HDM for Mac Preview you can additionally format all partitions to HFS+, NTFS, FAT32, ExtFS 2,3,4, exFAT:

Find these tips useful? Start using your Mac as a pro right now!

System Integrity Protection in OS X 10.11
El Capitan support;
Core Storage backup and restore;
Snapshot-driven backup;

Learn more about Paragon Hard Disk Manager for Mac

An extremely simple trick to keep your Mac or PC from unauthorized access

We frequently talk about recent security threats, including the new Trojan horse called “Locky” that encrypts your information forever, making it impossible to read.
Unfortunately, Locky is not the only virus that can cause problems for your operating system. There are many other types of viruses which can silently infiltrate a computer without you even noticing it. One of the most common and easiest ways of accessing your system is through an external flash or a hard drive.

There are a number of software solutions to help prevent such infection, as well as a radical and 100 percent secure hardware method. You can protect your USB ports from an unauthorized access for a short period of time simply by disabling the ports.

If you are using Windows…

All that you need is Notepad and an administrator-level account.

First, create a new document, then copy and paste the following text:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\USBSTOR]
”Start”=dword:00000004
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\USBSTOR\Enum]
”Count”=dword:00000000
”NextInstance”=dword:00000000

Save the file in the desired location and name it usboff.reg. Be sure to save it with the .reg extension and not .txt, or this trick will not work.

Now repeat the process, changing only two parts: in the line ”Start”=dword:00000004 change the 4 to a 3 , and then save a new file named usbon.reg.

Done!

Now when you want to disable the USB port, simply open the usboff.reg file and confirm the change. This will block any external drive plugged into your PC from working. As you might have guessed, opening and confirming the usbon.reg file will do just the opposite, once again enabling the USB port.
Assuming you are the only one with administrator-level access to the computer in question, no one will be able to change these files except you.

Now for the Mac

This trick is slightly more complicated than on Windows.
OS X 10.11 El Capitan brought with it an additional level of security for your Mac: System Integrity Protection (SIP), which prevents system-related files from modification. Even if you have an administrator-level account, you won’t be able to make changes to these files.

Apple’s new protection policy may have good intentions, but it clearly doesn’t help with our mission to disable USB.

NB! If you are using a USB keyboard or mouse, please don’t attempt this trick! You won’t be able to use these input devices, requiring an alternate method such as Bluetooth.

You can disable SIP by booting into recovery mode. Restart your Mac and hold Command+R as it boots.

From the menu, select Utilities > Terminal. In the Terminal window, type csrutil disable, press Enter, then restart your Mac.

To reenable SIP, launch Terminal while in Recovery mode, but this time type csrutil enable, then press Enter and restart.

But there’s an easier way – download and install the new Paragon Hard Disk Manager for Mac®, which provides, on top of other useful functions, one-click SIP disable feature.

When your SIP is disabled, do the following: open Finder and select Go -> Go to Folder from the menu. Copy and paste the /System/Library/Extensions path into the field and look for two files located there:

IOUSBMassStorageClass.kext
IOFireWireSerialBusProtocolTransport.KEXT

Move these files to the Desktop or other location, but be sure to keep them somewhere safe — you’ll need them to enable your USB ports again!

These small tricks can help you protect your information from being stolen or damaged. If you are interested in more advanced and useful features to protect your Mac, try our new Paragon Hard Disk Manager for Mac, a powerful disk management utility for OS X, featuring:

System Integrity Protection in OS X 10.11 El Capitan support;
Core Storage backup and restore;
Snapshot-driven backup;

Learn more about Paragon Hard Disk Manager for Mac

Сircumventing the security challenges of OS X El Capitan

OS X El capitan may be more resistant than ever to malicious software, but its arrival means new challenges lie ahead for some third-party developers.

SIP: Forcing developers to think different

OS X El Capitan 10.11 offers serious defense against malware on a number of fronts, most notably System Integrity Protection (SIP for short). SIP removes administrative overrides for processes running in the background and disables root access to /usr, /bin, /sbin, and /System, preventing ANY user or application (with the exception of Mac-native installer software) from writing to those locations or modifying files residing there.
In doing so, Apple has for the first time rejected a key Unix principal by limiting the access privileges of a “superuser” (better known as root). Traditionally, users with administrator privileges could install software and generally access any part of the root-level system they so desire, while regular users had more limited access.
Although this approach has generally worked well since OS X debuted in 2001, there was always the potential threat of local or remote attacks from rogue Trojan horse software that gained access to root. By implementing SIP, veteran Mac power users now consider the operating system to be “rootless.”
It should be noted that Apple has provided power users with a workaround to temporarily disable SIP, simply by booting into the Recovery partition and selecting Utilities > Security Configuration from the menu. Next, uncheck Enforce System Integrity Protection, click Apply Configuration, and restart for the change to take effect. However, it’s clear that SIP is the way forward, so developers and end users will need to adapt accordingly.

Disk Utility vs. Third-Party Drivers

The El Capitan version of Disk Utility has also been through major changes — both cosmetically and under the hood. Once you get used to the glossy new user interface, veteran users might notice Apple has entirely removed the option to repair disk permissions. That’s because Apple no longer allows permissions to change in any way, with the exception of an automatic repair run during software updates.

But that’s not all: Disk Utility no longer manages disks mounted by third-party drivers, at least not through the program’s graphical user interface. The reasons for the change don’t make a whole lot of sense to outsiders, especially when disks mounted by non-native drivers can still be mounted, formatted, or repaired by using the command-line diskutil.

Making OS X more like mobile

An additional security improvement removes the possibility of using unsigned kernel extensions (kexts) which modify the core of OS X. Starting with El Capitan, developers must sign kexts with a valid Apple certificate in order for them to continue working. This means perfectly good drivers for discontinued products or expensive hardware could suddenly become unusable after upgrading to the new OS — with no easy or reliable downgrade available!

By adopting such changes, Apple aims to make OS X a more user-friendly and secure platform similar to iOS, which powers the company’s popular iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch products. Although this move will surely benefit average users and protect them from the ever-increasing threat of malicious software, the additional layers of security temporarily complicate matters for advanced power users and Mac developers whose livelihood depends upon OS X.

The challenge for developers

If you already purchase most of your software from the Mac App Store, chances are you’ll never notice (or care) about the under-the-hood changes Apple has implemented with OS X El Capitan. But there are plenty of third-party developers who will be affected, especially those who offer software outside of Apple’s walled garden ecosystem.

The makers of popular utility software like Default Folder X have already discovered solutions to work around El Capitan’s new challenges, which required a complete overhaul of the existing application in order to implement. Paragon Software faced a similar challenge with NTFS for Mac, which adds the ability to write to Windows-formatted volumes, which can’t natively be done with OS X alone.

Like many other developers, Paragon products have traditionally stored application components in the very places El Capitan no longer permits. For example, the NTFS for Mac driver would be installed in /System/Library/Filesystems, while auxiliary command-line utilities were located in /usr/sbin.

Because of SIP, NTFS for Mac 14 and higher now place this driver in /Library/Filesystems, relocating associated utilities to /usr/local/sbin/, where root still has full privileges. It’s not only a reasonable alternative, but also remains proper Unix etiquette. Likewise, the NTFS for Mac 14 driver is properly signed as a kernel extension, making it a required update for owners of earlier versions prior to upgrading to El Capitan.

Meet the new NTFS for Mac 14

Here’s what NTFS for Mac 14 looks like when launched:

And here’s a look at the new way to format volumes as NTFS:

NTFS for Mac 14 can also be used to verify a volume for possible file system errors:

fsck_ufsd_NTFS finds and repairs errors on NTFS disks.

fsck_ufsd_NTFS formats a volume to NTFS.

mount_ufsd_NTFS mounts or unmounts NTFS disks.

Finally, support of the Windows NT file system is automatically added to the command-line diskutil during installation of the NTFS for Mac driver.

Download and try NTFS for Mac 14 for free!

Special for users of earlier OS X version: Try our full-functional Paragon NTFS for Mac Yosemite Free!

Despite its name, this multilingual product supports all OS X versions up to OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard!

Paragon NTFS for Mac eliminates boundaries between Mac and Windows operating systems, delivering full read and write support for NTFS-formatted drives on OS X. Paragon NTFS for Mac achieves the speed of native drivers and is the industry’s fastest solution for Mac users who want to share data between Mac and Windows systems, so that the user doesn’t even notice on which platform their files are.

Paragon NTFS for Mac 14

Paragon NTFS for Mac Yosemite Free is based on Paragon’s proprietary Universal File System Driver (UFSD) technology. Paragon UFSD provides full access (read/write, format, etc.) to volumes of the most popular file systems under all popular platforms (Mac, Windows, Linux, Android and DOS).

Availability:
Paragon NTFS for Mac Yosemite Free is available for download absolutely free of charge! For Mac users of El Capitan, the commercial 14th version is available at $19.99.
For other Mac products, please visit Mac ToolBox Portal.

Paragon Software Announces Storage SDKs for Android and iOS

New SDKs greatly simplify the creation of storage management apps for Android and iOS, and make it easy to add USB storage functionality to other apps.

USB storage is generally underused in mobile apps, even though there are various situations where it would be very convenient for users. Examples include on-the-go backup without relying on mobile data or Wi-Fi hotspots, and giving copies of photos or videos you’ve just taken to someone else without having to upload them. If you want to take movies on a trip to watch on the plane or in your hotel, for example, it’s much easier to save large media files on a flash drive, and this also avoids cluttering up the device’s limited internal storage.

Mobile OSes are beginning to incorporate USB storage support, but that support tends to be inflexible. This feature only came to Android in version 6 (Marshmallow), and that implementation only supports FAT32. That’s a problem for developers who want to produce apps that run on the majority of Android phones and tablets, and an even bigger one for those planning to create cross-platform apps. Furthermore, FAT32 imposes file-size limitations that can be inconveniently restrictive when dealing with large files such as HD and 4K videos.

Paragon Software’s new UFSD SDKs help fill this gap. Available for iOS (iPhone 5 and later, iPad 2 and later) and Android (version 3.0 and later), they abstract and implement support for multiple partitioning schemes (MBR, GPT and APM) and file systems (NTFS, HFS+, FAT32, ExFAT and ExtFS).

The UFSD SDKs will be of particular interest to storage vendors, as they can bundle Paragon’s UMS service and other Paragon FS drivers with portable USB storage products to ensure compatibility and interoperability with any OSes including iOS, Android, Linux, Mac OS X and Windows. Similarly, ISVs can use the SDKs to simplify the development of Android and iOS apps supporting multiple brands of mobile USB storage.

Since iOS provides a very limited support for external storage and only allows access to images stored on digital cameras via custom Lightning to USB adaptor, storage vendors entering the iOS market need a companion app that would support their storage media’s file system. Naturally, each vendor’s app only supports its own storage brand.

To provide a real-life example of how the UFSD SDK can be used, Paragon Software has developed a plug-in https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.paragon.tcplugins_ntfs_ro that adds USB storage support to the well-regarded, 4.5 star average rated, Total Commander file management app for Android. The plug-in has already been downloaded more than 400,000 times, which clearly demonstrates end-user interest in this capability.

A demonstration of a sample iOS app using the iOS UFSD SDK can be seen via YouTube: