I have a new 13" MBP and am a mac newbie. I have 8,400 photos (28GB worth) stored on my 5 year old Dell running Windows XP. I transferred all of them to a Seagate wireless external hard drive. The only way I can access the external drive from my Mac is via a web portal. I tried downloading my entire "My Pictures" folder from the external drive to my Mac but that's not allowed. It requires me to download each file (photo) separately. I can't download entire folders. Obviously this will take entirely too long with this many photos. What other method(s) can I use to import these photos from my PC to Mac. I plan to use iPhoto to manage them if that makes any difference. Thanks in advance.
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best way to transfer thousands of photos from PC to Mac
- Thread starter seedman76
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iPhoto library needs to be on HFS+ local drive. One of my gripes with iPhoto. Also seems silly you can't import from any drive a mac read, but the Apple forums seem to support that.
BUT, Aperture 3 can have its library anywhere.
Grab a free trial of Aperture 3 from the Apple website, try and import onto your drive with that.
Even IF you don't keep A3, once the photos are local, you ought to be able to get them into iPhoto.
I don't know for sure if this will work and may be a PITA, but it is a Free solution,
or you may find that A3 is well worth the 80 bones for the freedom it gives you over iPhoto.
BUT, Aperture 3 can have its library anywhere.
Grab a free trial of Aperture 3 from the Apple website, try and import onto your drive with that.
Even IF you don't keep A3, once the photos are local, you ought to be able to get them into iPhoto.
I don't know for sure if this will work and may be a PITA, but it is a Free solution,
or you may find that A3 is well worth the 80 bones for the freedom it gives you over iPhoto.
There are quite a few ways to do this.
The easiest may be to copy them over your local network. It'll take a while if it's wireless, but should work just fine.
The fastest way will be to copy them to an external HD that connects with USB or firewire, then connect the HD directly to your new macbook and drag and drop them into iPhoto.
The easiest may be to copy them over your local network. It'll take a while if it's wireless, but should work just fine.
The fastest way will be to copy them to an external HD that connects with USB or firewire, then connect the HD directly to your new macbook and drag and drop them into iPhoto.
Do you still have the old Dell computer with all the pictures on? A straight Ethernet to Ethernet data transfer would be the best bet. Here is a support article, scroll down to "direct connect" http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2518