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An Embarrassingly Noob Question...

J

joeblow7777

macrumors 604
Original poster
Sep 7, 2010
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Hey everyone. This is a rather simple question, but I keep finding contradictory or confusing answers.

I'm thinking of making the jump from PC to Mac, but one of the things that's holding me back is all my files, particularly ones that are stored on an external hard drive. Can a Mac read an external HD with files from a PC, or does the drive have to be re-formatted for a Mac, thereby erasing everything?
 
If your drive is formatted in exFAT, it can be read from a PC or a Mac without issue. If it's a different file format, you should reformat it, in exFAT if you still need it to be read from a PC, if not you can try other Mac files format like APFS or macOS Extended
 
If the partition table is NTFS, then you’ll need to format the drive as macOS natively can only read from NTFS drives, not write to them. There are some NTFS drivers out there however they can be buggy.

If all of your drives were formatted/initialised in Windows, then they are most likely NTFS.

If you wish to be able to read and write to both macOS and Windows, use exFAT.

Otherwise, I’d migrate to APFS or HFS+.
 
theMarble said:
If the partition table is NTFS, then you’ll need to format the drive as macOS natively can only read from NTFS drives, not write to them. There are some NTFS drivers out there however they can be buggy.

If all of your drives were formatted/initialised in Windows, then they are most likely NTFS.

If you wish to be able to read and write to both macOS and Windows, use exFAT.

Otherwise, I’d migrate to APFS or HFS+.
Click to expand...
So you're saying that as it is, a Mac can likely read my HD but not write to it?
 
I see. So does that go the other way as well? If a drive was formatted for a Mac, a PC would be able to read its files but not write to it?
 
joeblow7777 said:
I see. So does that go the other way as well? If a drive was formatted for a Mac, a PC would be able to read its files but not write to it?
Click to expand...
Not quite. No Windows machine can read or write to APFS drives as far I know, and there are one or two programs that do let you read HFS+ drives (HFSExplorer is one of them).

Bootcamp drivers do let you read and write to HFS+ and APFS drives, however those only work with Macs that are running Bootcamp (so only Intel Macs).
 
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joeblow7777 said:
Hey everyone. This is a rather simple question, but I keep finding contradictory or confusing answers.

I'm thinking of making the jump from PC to Mac, but one of the things that's holding me back is all my files, particularly ones that are stored on an external hard drive. Can a Mac read an external HD with files from a PC, or does the drive have to be re-formatted for a Mac, thereby erasing everything?
Click to expand...


The best way to move data from the PC is to share the PC's drive on the network, and then mount it on the Mac. Then you can drag and drop the PC's data to where you want it. The problem is if you want to re-use the physical drive on your new Mac.

Any new Mac will have Thunderbolt ports for plugging in new drives. If your old PC'ds drive is not Thunderbolt 4, then just replace it. It will work but it will be too slow. It's time to upgrade.

Then what do you do with the old PC drive? Use it for Time Machine. Slow drives work well for Time Machine because they work in the background and you don't have to wait for them

While a network share is easy, you can physically move the drive to the Mac, The Mac can either directly read it or with some add-on software can read it. But a network share works with no extra software

Yes, you will want to erase and reformat the drive to APFS. APFS works dramatically better tham NTFS.

In any case, it seems that you need an external disk just to hold you data and you will also want another external disk for Time Machine. So you need a second disk no matter what. Buy the fastest MVME SDD you can that has a TB4 interface and use that to hold your data. If the old PC drive is big enough, use that for Time Machine.
 
ChrisA said:
If your old PC'ds drive is not Thunderbolt 4, then just replace it. It will work but it will be too slow. It's time to upgrade.
Click to expand...
There has been zero information in this thread about what the drive is being used for, so you can't authoritatively declare that it's "too slow". It certainly won't be any slower than it is at the moment.
 
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joeblow7777 said:
I'm thinking of making the jump from PC to Mac, but one of the things that's holding me back is all my files, particularly ones that are stored on an external hard drive. Can a Mac read an external HD with files from a PC, or does the drive have to be re-formatted for a Mac, thereby erasing everything?
Click to expand...
How big are your existing disks? What are they used for?

If your needs are fairly modest, I suggest 1) purchase enough SSD for data storage (a combination of internal SSD and an external SSD), 2) use your existing HDD for Time Machine backup of the internal and external SSDs. All formatted with APFS. But need to know what you have and what you use it for to be any clearer.

For transfer of data, do as @ChrisA suggests and enable file sharing on the Windows and copy what you need to the Mac.
 
joeblow7777 said:
Hey everyone. This is a rather simple question, but I keep finding contradictory or confusing answers.

I'm thinking of making the jump from PC to Mac, but one of the things that's holding me back is all my files, particularly ones that are stored on an external hard drive. Can a Mac read an external HD with files from a PC, or does the drive have to be re-formatted for a Mac, thereby erasing everything?
Click to expand...
It would really help if you could say what Mac you are considering. Older Macs have different ports, in multiple configurations. Looking for some advice on the new Mac, in my opinion you can't go wrong with a new MacBook Air, either the 13" or 15". If you are considering doing video or serious sound production, the Mac Studio is a great choice with a good monitor.
In any case you will need to get your personal files on an ExFAT drive so you can transfer the files to the new Mac. A new MacBook Air for example has TB4 ports that also can be used with a USB-C cable (USB-A connecter on one end OK) to connect to your older drive. When you buy the new Mac, if you do so at an Apple store, take your old drive with you. The genius at the store can probably see that your data gets transferred.
Probably helpful if you could read up on the basics for using a Mac or have a friend talk you through the basics.
Bon Voyage!
 
gilby101 said:
For most use cases you really don't need the fastest. A USB 3.x gen2 is more than enough unless the OP is into processing video.
Click to expand...

gilby101 said:
How big are your existing disks? What are they used for?

If your needs are fairly modest, I suggest 1) purchase enough SSD for data storage (a combination of internal SSD and an external SSD), 2) use your existing HDD for Time Machine backup of the internal and external SSDs. All formatted with APFS. But need to know what you have and what you use it for to be any clearer.

For transfer of data, do as @ChrisA suggests and enable file sharing on the Windows and copy what you need to the Mac.
Click to expand...

davidlv said:
It would really help if you could say what Mac you are considering. Older Macs have different ports, in multiple configurations. Looking for some advice on the new Mac, in my opinion you can't go wrong with a new MacBook Air, either the 13" or 15". If you are considering doing video or serious sound production, the Mac Studio is a great choice with a good monitor.
In any case you will need to get your personal files on an ExFAT drive so you can transfer the files to the new Mac. A new MacBook Air for example has TB4 ports that also can be used with a USB-C cable (USB-A connecter on one end OK) to connect to your older drive. When you buy the new Mac, if you do so at an Apple store, take your old drive with you. The genius at the store can probably see that your data gets transferred.
Probably helpful if you could read up on the basics for using a Mac or have a friend talk you through the basics.
Bon Voyage!
Click to expand...
Thanks for the insights, everyone. Let me be a bit more clear: I'm thinking of getting the forthcoming M3 13" Macbook Air whenever it eventually comes out. The drive I'm talking about is just a simple Seagate external HDD. Speed isn't a factor, unless you're saying that being too slow could prevent it from working at all. I'm talking about transferring files, not trying to run them off the drive.
 
Get some kind of external drive.

It can be a platter-based hard drive, an SSD, even a USB flash drive of sufficient capacity.

Format it on the PC to exFAT.

Copy the files you want to move onto it.
Take the drive and connect it to the Mac.

Does it show up on the desktop?
Good.

Next, try this:
Click ONE TIME on the icon of the drive to select it.
Now, summon up the "get info" box for the drive.
You can "control-click" on it, or just type "command-i".

At the bottom of get info, click the lock and enter your Mac account administrative password.
Now, put a check into "ignore ownership on this volume" (sharing and permissions).

Close get info.

Now you should be able to copy stuff from the exFAT drive to your new Mac account, and stuff you copy should automatically "come under the ownership" of your new account.

This avoids "permissions problems"...

NOTE: Since I don't use PC's, I'm going to GUESS that the above procedure works.
It DOES work when going "Mac-to-Mac". Just not sure about "PC-to-Mac"...
 
macOS can only read NTFS drives but can read and write on FAT32 and exFAT drives...

FAT32 has a limitation of 4GB file size or smaller while exFAT virtually has no file size limitation...

I'm in the same boat as you, mostly a Windows user but now also uses a Mac... I tried macOS on a Hackintosh so I am not entirely new to it but I now own a MacBook Pro 2015...

If you are going to switch often between macOS and Windows, and have files or will be saving files bigger than 4GB, then exFAT is your best choice for file system to use... Otherwise, you should be okay with FAT32 (shows as MS-DOS (FAT) on macOS)

In the case that you will be using macOS exclusively after you have copied/transferred your files, it's best that you format the drive using APFS...
 
OP I just wanted to say, having made the same move, I just yanked my internal drives out, plugged them into one of these: https://sabrent.com/products/ec-dflt

Plugged that into my Mac Mini, and manually copied over the files that I wanted to keep. It was time consuming but it worked fine.
 
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