Data & Hard Drive Swap from PC to Mac

[Prodo123]

2.2Ghz 15" MBP, and I need to swap hard drives.
I'm swapping my Seagate Momentus XT (SD25) which has all of my data on it, to the Mac.
I also want to transfer all of my data along with the hard drive.

There's two options:
1. Move all of my data to an external drive via USB/ethernet, swap hard drives, install OS X and move the files back
2. Swap hard drives first, install Mac on unallocated space, and move data via local file transfer

Theoretically the first one should take 3 days to complete. The second one should take 3 hours or less. The problem is, I don't know if the second option will work.
I'm also confused on OS X's compatibility with NTFS. Are NTFS file partitions read-only in OS X, or do they not show up at all?

Are any of these viable solutions, or do you have any other suggestions?

Thanks!

 

[alust2013]

Solution 1 will work, 2 will not. It will have to be totally reformatted to be a bootable OS X volume, as it has to use the GUID partition table, which it doesn't, coming from a PC. Option 1 may be more of a pain, but it's pretty much the only option. NTFS is read-only without a couple third party installs, and should mount normally.

 

[Prodo123]

Solution 1 will work, 2 will not. It will have to be totally reformatted to be a bootable OS X volume, as it has to use the GUID partition table, which it doesn't, coming from a PC. Option 1 may be more of a pain, but it's pretty much the only option. NTFS is read-only without a couple third party installs, and should mount normally.

That's why I'll reserve 160GB as unallocated, unformatted space to be used for the MACOSX format. That way a bootable OS X partition is created alongside a preexisting Windows partition. I've done it before with Hackintoshes, so would this work with a Mac too?

 

[alust2013]

It may be worth a try, but I don't know how that would work. PCs typically use MBR, as it works with the normal BIOS. However, for a hackintosh, you may have had a system with EFI rather than BIOS, which would mean it would already use the GUID partition table. If it's MBR though, I believe you're out of luck.

 

[Prodo123]

It may be worth a try, but I don't know how that would work. PCs typically use MBR, as it works with the normal BIOS. However, for a hackintosh, you may have had a system with EFI rather than BIOS, which would mean it would already use the GUID partition table. If it's MBR though, I believe you're out of luck.

I'll give it a try. After all, GPT and EFI both have backwards compatibility to BIOS and MBR.

 

[alust2013]

I'll give it a try. After all, GPT and EFI both have backwards compatibility to BIOS and MBR.

Correct, but OS X doesn't like MBR as a boot volume.