MacBook Pro :: Transfer Files Off An External Hard Drive Formatted For Windows?
Feb 2, 2012
I just bought my first mac (yay!) and am trying to transfer my files off of my old pc. The problem is that I stored all my personal files on an external hard drive, which is of course formatted for windows. My mac will open it, but it is "read only." I tried plugging it back into my pc and using the Migration Assistant to transfer my files over, but it was not detected (rest of the pc was).
However, the second time I tried plugging it in to my pc, it told me it would need to be formatted first. Obviously my mac has changed something on it, and now all my personal files are on a hard drive that is unusable by either my old pc or my new mac!
My Seagate hard rive is saying that it is formatted NTFS when I plug it into my new mac. I have only ever used it on a mac and it didn't ever say this when i used it on my old computer.. Im not quite sure what to do because I have no where to put all my stuff to reformat it?
Also I made sure when I bought the hard drive that it was both windows and mac compatible...
I figured it was the motherboard and that is way too costly to replace. So I just bought a Macbook and I'm waiting for it to arrive. I'm pretty sure that the hard drive on my pavillion is still ok, so what I've purchased a hard drive enclosure and plan to use that as an external hard drive as well as transfer my files to my new macbook. My question is whether I would be able to transfer my files from my PC hard drive to the macbook directly without formatting the hard drive because that will erase all my files.
I had a Windows based PC a couple of years ago that had crashed. So recently i tried to put the files from my old hard drive from my Windows computer to my Mac. In order to keep track of what i have copied and what I haven't i thought it would be good to delete the stuff of my windows hard drive once it was copied. However, it doesn't let me delete anything of the Windows drive since it is set to read only. Is there a way around this? i've tried everything i can think of, but haven't found a soluti
I had no issues taking files from my external hard drive and transferring them to my new macbook air. However, I cannot download the photos I just added from the macbook air to my external hard drive.I do not want to erase my external hard drive as it has many many files on it from computers past. Â
How do I transfer image files from a MacBook Pro (OSX 10.9.4) to an external USB hard drive? I do not see a way to create a new folder to put these images in first and I do not see an option to send them to the external drive when I right-click on the iphoto app they exist in now.
My friend wanted some files to be transferred to his external hard drive from my Mac. As he is a Windows user, I guess his hard drive is formatted for Windows as well. As I plug in the hard disk in my Mac, I can't transfer the files. It says something like "the disk cannot be modified". So, please help me on how can I transfer this files from my Mac and if I do format it to work with the Mac, will it work for Windows later?
I have an IMAC and I am having problems transferring video files I download to my external hard drive. I had trouble playing the files at first because it was not readable with Quicktime. I downloaded VPN and it played with VPN. I don't want to save those files on my computer so I would like to transfer it to my external harddrive. When I try to drag it over, it won't let me drop it in. I am new to the MAC world. Is there a way to choose where it will save itself right before you download like there is on windows. I click on it and it does not prompt you, it just starts downloading.
when I insert my 'FAT' formatted external hard drive (Samsung M3) into my mac book pro it comes up with the error message that says "the inserted disk is not readable by this computer" and I therefore cannot access the files. The story (potential further details):Â
1. I had a problem with my mac where it took hours to load each time I turned it on, would only work when power was plugged in etc. so I had to reformat my mac hard drive (when I tried to veriify it said repair, that wouldn't work). So i'm starting with a recently reformatted, clean mac.Â
2. Before doing this I reformatted my external hard drive (whilst on windows machine) to FAT32 (so I can use on both windows and mac) so that I could back up my files.Â
3. I then transferred files from mac onto external hard drive and then also put them on a windows machine.Â
4. After reformatting mac hard drive when I then tried to transfer files back onto the mac I get the 'not readable' error.Â
I have just bought my first iMac after my old windows PC blue screened and died this week. I have been using itunes for years an have 2 ipods and an ipad. I managed to extract my old hard drive from the tower unit and have managed to get it working using a caddy. I have transferred my iTunes folder to an external hard drive. I have set up my Mac in the basic manner and now want to transfer my itunes to the new itunes on my new Mac. I have tried using the Setup Assistant but when I plug in the hard drive it is not recognised and nothing happens except the spinning wheel.
My external Hard Drive (Western Digital 2TB hard drive in a ICYBOX 2-bay USB 2.0 HD Dock) won't transfer files to the Mac HD. The transfer box comes up but stays at the 'estimating time' stage and remains like that. No matter how big the file/group of files are (biggest I've tried was only 500-odd MB) it won't transfer and stays at the 'estimating time' stage. When I try and stop the transfer, the transfer box remains at the 'stopping' stage until I restart the iMac. I can access other programs during this 'stopping' stage, as long as it doesn't involve the External HD.Â
When I attempt to open files from the External HD in Photoshop CS4, both Photoshop and Finder stop responding and have I have to 'Force Quit'. However, upon force quitting finder, I loose all icons on the desktop until I restart the Mac via holding down the 'Power' button on the back.Â
Ive already done a couple things.Â
- I excluded the Ext HD on the Spotlight>Privacy tab. - I verified the Ext HD via System Utilities. Some errors came up but the Repair was successful and subsequent Verifications have returned as 'OK'. - I tried the Mac Diagnostic tool as suggested by Apple, but when I press the 'D' key on start up nothing happens.Â
The annoying thing is that this problem came out of the blue, the Ext HD was working fine 3 days ago.Â
My system:Â iMac 21.5inch, mid 2010 3.6GHz Intel Core i5 8GB 1333 MHz DDR3 OS X 10.9.5 (13F34)Â
The Ext HD:Â Western Digital 2TB Mac OS Extended (Journalised) 1.91TB available on the HD Shares a 2 Bay ICYBOX dock with another 2TB WD HD Connected to the iMac via USB 2.0 to a 4-port USB 2.0 hubÂ
I am trying to access a PC formatted external hard drive, however when I attempt to mount it I get a message saying the drive is not recognized and if I want ti initialize, which i believe if I execute will remove the files I am trying access..Is there a way to access the files on the external hard drive...it is a avi file i need to edit.
How to copy files to external hard disk and use it for both mac and windows. there is the fat32 formatting bt i dont wanna use formatting because i already have a lot of content on the exteral hard disk.
Info: MacBook Air (13-inch Mid 2013), OS X Mavericks (10.9.1)
I try erasing it again and making sure it is formatted for MSDOS and still no luck. So I try partitioning and that is also no luck. 1 part for mac, other free space because no windows option was present
I bought a new 500GB WD hard drive for my Late 2008 MacBook to upgrade from my 250GB drive. I have a hard drive enclosure, but I was wondering if when I install my 500GB hard drive, would I be able to use the enclosure to transfer files from my 250GB drive? I hope this was specific enough to get a clear response. If not, I'll try re-wording my question.
I just bought the 15" Macbook Pro i7 this weekend. I have a copy of Windows, and it loads up just fine. I used Bootcamp Assistant to partition my hard drive, but when I get to the windows install, it says that the hard drive isn't formatted correctly to install windows on
I'm running Lion on a Macbook Pro. It doesn't recognize one of my external drives that was used on my windows based laptop when connected via the USB cable. Is there a way to mount this external drive on a mac?Â
when i plug in my external thats programmed to my mac, on a windows based computer i cant seem to read the hard drive. is there a program or somthing where i can detect it and transfer files between it?
I have recently made the plunge into mac kingdom and very pleased so far.
I am going through the pain staking task of transferring music, photos etc.. from my windows laptop to my new macbook pro.
I started off by setting up file sharing and copying files but it is taking absolutely ages.
Ideally I would like to use my 500gb mybook external hard drive but given an experience I just had when putting a memory stick in my mac straight after loading it up from my pc am I likely to lose all my current external hard drive data?
Complete ball ache if thats the case as all my films are on there and burning it all to DVD would take forever.
I accidentally formatted my external hard drive when I was creating a Windows USB install disk with Boot Camp It was a HFS+ formatted drive with a GUID partition table and 2 partitions: one clone of my Macbook OS, and one with personal data. I'm not worried about the OS clone, I'm more concerned about getting my personal data back on the second partition.So far I've used Stellar Phoenix and Data Rescue 3. I reformatted the hard drive from FAT to HFS+ before I did these scans. Not sure if it was a good idea, but the programs wouldn't scan properly otherwise.Stellar finds my files with the original folder structure, but I can't open any of the files, even though the file sizes seem to be correct. Data Rescue partially finds the original folder structure, and also has a "Reconstructed files" section which has all my files sorted by file type and without the original file name. I really want to avoid going through all my photos, videos, etc. one by one to sort them out.
Can I still recover my files in the original folder structure? Why can Stellar find all my files basically intact, but I can't open anything? In the meantime, I'm going to try scanning with Disk Drill and FileSalvage with fingers crossed...
I can't transfer from my external harddrive on to my mac for some reason it's unable to complete the transfer of 78.6GB of music there is over 400GB of free space on my mac as it's only one day old!Â
I am going to get an MBP 17" in 1 month time (first Mac) and I would like to get an external hard drive for backup & media storage.
My media files are on a desktop PC and, as I am also about to move to a different country, it would be ideal for me to do the following:
1) get the external drive and transfer files from PC to the drive now
2) take it with me and connect it to MBP when I get the Mac
As mentioned, I have never owned a Mac and all the stuff I find on the internet relates to transferring files from PC to Mac. Is it possible to transfer those files to the Mac drive "in absence" of the MBP?
I just bought a Western Digital 1TB My Book Essential Edition external hard drive. I have a lot of videos, stored as disk images, from my HD camcorder on my MacBook that I want to copy onto the external hard drive for storage and also transfer to my other MacBook. The problem is that this hard drive is setup so that it will not transfer any file over 4 GB. A lot of these disk images are over 4GB and thus will not transfer. Is there any way to reformat this external HD to a system that will allow transfer over the 4GB threshold? If so, can someone please explain the process to me in as much detail as possible? If not, can someone recommend an external HD that does not have transfer limits?
I had to get a new hard drive put into my macbook pro because it was failing. So, I moved all my data onto an external hard drive so I would not lose anything. But now I cannot get iphoto or imovie back onto my computer. It says I cannot open it because it is a time machine back up. I don't want to have to purchase iPhoto and iMovie again just because I had to replace my hard drive.
I have a quick question that maybe you guys can help me with. I used to store all my music on an external drive, but now that I got a Mac I decided to just save them on the internal drive. When I select the External drive and Copy the files to transfer somewhere along the lines it gives me an error and pretty much the transfer Stalls(the transfer window stays open but nothing is being moved) and it wont close or nothing unless I restart. I really don't know what file is corrupt or anything, Is there a software I can get to make this process easier? I am trying to transfer over 100gb of music Via USB.
I am assuming firewire would be the quickest, what about the firewire 800 or w/e it is in the macbook pros though? Is USB 2.0 significantly slower than the firewire? I want to buy a external HDD that is around 500gb in size and can transfer over files just like my normal HDD is. 100% of the time that the MBP is home it will be attached to this. I want to put almost everything there is on my laptop over onto the external hard drive except for stuff I need (which then I'd just pull it onto the desktop) when I leave the house. I'm assuming the western digital 500gb passport essential is the best buy, but I don't know much about it at all. It's only USB 2.0, which sounds like the slowest option when you throw firewire in the search.
