Going Apple next month.. How to transfer my large amounts of windows formatted media?

[/Jim]

Hi all,

Im currently a windows user but next month am upgrading to the 27" Apple mac, the cheaper of the two (£1399 I believe). I take a lot of photos and edit all the time on Photoshop, therefore have 3 hard drives full of HD video, hundreds of folders of photos and other important data. My concern is that i'm going to have difficulty transferring or using it.

A month or so ago I tried to copy/paste a few folders of HD footage from a friends MacBook Pro onto my 1TB hard drive, but was informed it is read only. After Googleing this I have found that Mac and Windows read and write in different formats. I could see data on the drive using the Macbook but not add to it or delete - read only.

When I get my Mac, what's the best way to deal with all the photos and videos to make the hard drives compatible? I'm thinking copy all the data off the drives onto the Mac, then erase and format the drives, then add them back on? Seems like a horrid thing to do on a brand new Apple.. Fill up the hard drive straight away.. Or should I buy a new Hard drive and copy straight to it? Expensive option I know..

Or, having still got my PC, can I re-format the drives to a mac compatible format without loosing the data? I've read something called "DOS MS" or something along those lines is compatible with both OS's? Ideally I want the HDs to work with both but am not expectiing this to be possible.

Anyone help me out here? Surely when migrating to Apple from PC everyone faces this problem?

 

[welshname]

Re: Going Apple next month.. How to transfer my large amounts of windows formatted me

OS X can read NTFS formatted drives so you should have no problem accessing your files. Buy yourself some external HDD enclosures and plug them into the mac

OS X is more compatible with windows than windows is with OS X if you get me.

 

[/Jim]

Re: Going Apple next month.. How to transfer my large amounts of windows formatted me

I get what you mean, thanks for the fast reply.

Buy yourself some external HDD enclosures and plug them into the mac

What are enclosures? Like a docking station for my drives? Different brands/sizes Excuse my lack of knowledge

Ah, thankyou, so you're suggesting that the OS that my friend had on his Macbook Pro was uncapable of reading the data, but a NEW Mac with OSX will be able to?

 

[Adam.]

Re: Going Apple next month.. How to transfer my large amounts of windows formatted me

The drive needs to be formatted freshly to work on both otherwise it appears as read only.

 

[welshname]

Re: Going Apple next month.. How to transfer my large amounts of windows formatted me

I get what you mean, thanks for the fast reply.

Ah, thankyou, so you're suggesting that the OS that my friend had on his Macbook Pro was uncapable of reading the data, but a NEW Mac with OSX will be able to?

Well I'm unsure as to old versions of mac os but as far as I am aware and from my own experience, OS X will read NTFS drives and you should have no compatibility issues with them. I don't quite understand what you meant about copying data to his mac. But there really shouldn't be an issue, something must have been done wrong the first time round.

I'll wait for one of the more experienced apple fan boys to confirm this though.

 

[SamP]

Re: Going Apple next month.. How to transfer my large amounts of windows formatted me

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B004FJWQTA/?tag=cliospnet01-21

Purchase this. Back up everything to it, copy to iMac. Clear NAS, then set it up to back up your iMac once a day/week/whatever.

Job done.

 

[/Jim]

Re: Going Apple next month.. How to transfer my large amounts of windows formatted me

Well I'm unsure as to old versions of mac os but as far as I am aware and from my own experience, OS X will read NTFS drives and you should have no compatibility issues with them. I don't quite understand what you meant about copying data to his mac. But there really shouldn't be an issue, something must have been done wrong the first time round.

The drive was read only whilst plugged into his mac, all we did was plug it in then unplug it a few times, but it wouldn't allow anything to be written to it, because it's always been used on my PCs I assumed.

I think my only option is to transfer it all onto the mac, then format the external drive, then back it all back up onto the external drive once it's formatted. FAT32 only holds data up to 4GB apparently, so I should format it NFTS?

Purchase this. Back up everything to it, copy to iMac. Clear NAS, then set it up to back up your iMac once a day/week/whatever.

Overkill I think, it's features are more than I need, and why buy that when I could buy a 2tb drive for less than £100 and do the same?

 

[SamP]

Re: Going Apple next month.. How to transfer my large amounts of windows formatted me

Network storage seems the logical choice as it means you can just plug it into your router and forget about it. Theres much cheaper things out there thats just the first thing that came to mind.

 

[Dafthead]

Re: Going Apple next month.. How to transfer my large amounts of windows formatted me

Don't forget to use the link to buy with education discount ;-)

 

[/Jim]

Re: Going Apple next month.. How to transfer my large amounts of windows formatted me

Education discount eh! Is it easy to obtain? I have three younger brothers in school.. I want to purchase it legitimately, however it has taken me a while to save for it! Planning on buying the real photoshop & after effects in the future.. Big savings on student prices there too.. Many others done it?

Network storage seems the logical choice as it means you can just plug it into your router and forget about it. Theres much cheaper things out there thats just the first thing that came to mind.

That is a lot easier, thank you for your input I may look for something like that but cheaper.

 

[Sanders]

I used the link mentioned to buy my MacBook, no questions asked, £65 app store voucher and 3 years AppleCare free with it, Happy days