external windows hard drive questions

[solinari6]

So the other day, my PC started on fire out of the blue. Luckily it shut itself off, and besides some smoke and nasty stench, the hard drives in there made it out OK.

So I got some external hard drive enclosures and hooked them up to my Mac. And they aren't quite working as I'd hoped.

They show up on my desktop as "UNTITLED" and "UNTITLED 1". Obviously I'd like to rename them to something better, but based on what I've seen online, I can't because they are formatted for windows.

It looks like I can't even write to these disks, for the same reason.

So I'm not sure what to do here... It almost sounds like I need to copy all the files to a THIRD hard drive, then re-format the windows drives to OSX Journaled, and then copy all the files back? Man, that seems like a hassle.

Are there any other alternatives?

I also though about maybe using the windows main boot drive as a boot camp drive ... is that even possible? Everything I've seen talks about formatting external drives before using them with boot camp, I'd like to just start up bootcamp, and say "Use that drive" and have it all magically work. (LOL)

 

[Juicy Box]

They are probably formatted as NTFS, which is the files system that is usually on Windows.

Mac cannot natively write on that file system, but they can read it.

You have lots of options though....

It almost sounds like I need to copy all the files to a THIRD hard drive, then re-format the windows drives to OSX Journaled, and then copy all the files back?

Mac and Windows can read/write on FAT32 and exFAT. So you can use a third drive for and just do that format.
You can use paid software to have Mac read NTFS.
You can bootcamp your Mac, but.....

I also though about maybe using the windows main boot drive as a boot camp drive ... is that even possible?

I'm not sure if you can do this, maybe someone else can chime in about boot camp.

Does Windows have an equivalent to Mac's migration assistant? If so, bootcamp your Mac, and use your boot drive to migrate to your new bootcamp drive.
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You can bootcamp your Mac, but.....

I forgot to say that you can access your NTFS drives on your bootcamped Mac.

 

[solinari6]

thanks for the advice... I just downloaded the Paragon NTFS trial, and at least now I can rename the drives! Hopefully that change sticks if the trial ends. That may just be worth the $20 though!

 

[prisstratton]

The NTFS for Mac software is fully functional during the trial period and it does not revert your changes when the trial ends, it merely stops working.

 

[DeltaMac]

Just to clarify prisstratton's post: The software stops working when the trial ends. Any changes that you make to the drives will remain in place (such as new names). Your drives will continue to work. And, you will still be able to read the files on the disks. You just won't be able to modify anything, unless you change the drive's format.
And, I agree - you may find that only $20 to get full use of the drives in their existing format can be worth a lot to you.

If your "firebug" PC was running Windows 10, then you may be able to boot to the original boot drive, with a bit of manipulation of the existing windows install. Older systems are not as capable of booting from external drives as from Win10 boot.