Transfering files from imac over to new Windows PC

ipsychedelic said:

It means your external drive is formatted with OS X Filesystem (HFS+), so windows cannot (by default) read it and hence it gets recognized as corrupt or unformatted.

You have two choices:
1. If you are using this external more on the Pc than on the iMac (which I assume to be the logical thing), then you are better off formatting the external to NTFS (what windows can read by default) and getting something to write to NTFS drives (OS X can only read by default) on OS X, like Tuxera-NTFS. I don't know of free products that are currently supported in say, Lion or ML (not that I have searched for them anyway, don't have an use), but you could search around. I believe there was a way to write NTFS natively on OS X, but it was unstable and don't know if it will work on latest versions of OS X.

2. If you are using this external more on the iMac than on the PC (which I assume to be illogical, as you kinda say you bought this PC to replace the iMac), then you'd do exactly as (1) but backwards. That is, you'd format the drive HFS+ (well, don't need to, as you currently have it that way), and then get a HFS+ reader/writer for Windows, like MacDrive, or the reader-only HFSExplorer (with the latter you wouldn't be able to write files on Windows to the external).

Now, leaving that aside, it's hard to maybe help you out with a better alternative, as you don't mention too much, but if I assume correctly, you're just using the external as a "bridge"? In that case there are better options, like file transferring software via LAN, or even something like Dropbox, to get the files across without intermediaries.

I personally wouldn't recommend FAT32 as Big Dave suggests, because you are dealing with video files, and FAT32 has a 4 GB limit per file, that can be annoying.

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ipsychedelic said:

No it's actually my bad, because it's the painless and most effective solution (using the current workflow), but I stopped using FAT32 years ago so I forget


Dropbox is a cloud service where you store files in "the cloud" (their internet servers) and then once you copy a file to your dropbox "folder, it gets uploaded (to the cloud) and later on it will sync (download) on other devices (Mac, PC, Linux, Smartphone), automagically. But it has the drawback that, if your internet connection is not fast enough (slow) then the upload+download can take a lot longer than just copying the files across. And if your video files are too big then you might even hit dropbox free account size limit (3 GB? can't remember), unless you "upgrade" to a premium account.
Maybe not the best solution.

I think Big Dave's idea of transferring via an Ethernet cable (provided the PC and iMac are in the same house/room) would work best, fast and easy, once you get the hang of it.

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ipsychedelic said:

If you still wanna keep on using the external, then you can
1. Do as I said on (1)
2. Do as I said on (2)
3. Do as Big Dave said (format to FAT32), but then be aware you'd need to split the files before transfer (or split to the external, then join on Windows at copy time). This can be cumbersome.

If you are ready to ditch the external from the middle of the equation, then you can turn on file sharing on windows and then access those folders on the iMac (apparently it's automatic on OS X to discover those shared Windows folders, but I never tried myself), then transfer via Wi-Fi.
If for some reason you would be against enabling sharing on the PC, then you can use something like FileDrop, or Transfer-On-LAN.

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