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HELP Transferring between devices

A

ared

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Nov 19, 2014
3
0
Hey there,

I just jumped on the Apple train and bought a mid 2011 11'' MBA. Naturally there are some teething problems.

At the moment I have two USB devices plugged in. one external hard drive and one camera. I'm trying to get the files from the camera directly to the hard drive but it will not let me.

How do I do this?

Also, why do none of my keyboard short cuts seem to work?

Many thanks.
 
need to reformat to mac os extended (journaled) or at least FAT32.
 
I use ExFAT formatted external drives to transfer data between my Mac and Windows boxes.

Use /Applications -> Utilities -> Disk Utility to format (and destroy all data on) a device.
 
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ared said:
At the moment I have two USB devices plugged in. one external hard drive and one camera. I'm trying to get the files from the camera directly to the hard drive but it will not let me.
Click to expand...

Open the Image Capture app from the /Applications folder and it should see the photos on the camera and allow you to import them.

Then to put them on the external it will need to be in a format that OS X can write to like the native Mac OS Extended format or FAT/ExFAT. You can format the drive with Disk Utility.
 
Paragon has a NTFS driver so that you can use your windows drives without having to reformat everything all the time: Paragon.

I have used it for over a year now and it is quite good. Beats reformatting everything for me.
 
ared said:
Hey there,

I just jumped on the Apple train and bought a mid 2011 11'' MBA. Naturally there are some teething problems.

At the moment I have two USB devices plugged in. one external hard drive and one camera. I'm trying to get the files from the camera directly to the hard drive but it will not let me.

How do I do this?
Click to expand...

Depends on what doesn't work about it. Can you not figure out how to see the pictures on the camera? (You need to run Image Capture.) Or is it not letting you write files to the external drive? (Probably need to reformat the drive, as explained by others.)

ared said:
Also, why do none of my keyboard short cuts seem to work?

Many thanks.
Click to expand...

Most keyboard shortcuts on the Mac involve pressing the command key (next to the spacebar) and not the control key in the corner. Maybe that's what's going wrong.
 
Keyboard shortcuts are different on Mac. ⌘-C is copy and ⌘-V is paste.

Cut only exists for text for some silly Apple reason. The solution for files is ⌘-C and a special paste that moves the files not just copies them: Alt-⌘-V.

A surprise for me was that the Enter key will rename a file, not open it. ⌘-O will open a file. ⌘-W will close the current window and sometimes close the app. ⌘-Q will close the app and all open windows. It is a weird system.

An irritation is getting a size of multiple files. Windows automatically supports this. On Mac ⌘-I gets you a size for one file and if you select multiple files it just opens multiple properties windows. The Apple way is Alt-⌘-I.

Another oddity is that there is no way to preview all images in a directory like Windows, where you can just press next. If you select a few photos, you can open those as a group and cycle through them. But if it is a big directory it makes multiple groups and this becomes a mess. There is no built in way and I have been using Picasa for my photos. You can also choose iPhoto but avoid buying Aperture as it is currently discontinued.

Hope this helps.
 
Ntfs

Don't reformat the drive, OS X can read NFTS just fine.

Though it's not a preferred disk type.
 
Hey guys,

Thanks for your help so far.

I shall try reformatting it.

And thank you for the shortcuts is well, it's nice to get them explained as some things I'm realizing are just apple quirks.
 
ared said:
Hey guys,

Thanks for your help so far.

I shall try reformatting it.

And thank you for the shortcuts is well, it's nice to get them explained as some things I'm realizing are just apple quirks.
Click to expand...

You're going to get some frosty reception if you start calling standard Apple stuff "quirks." :)

These keyboard shortcuts have been around since the first Mac in 1984, and before the first version of Windows.
 
motrek said:
You're going to get some frosty reception if you start calling standard Apple stuff "quirks." :)

These keyboard shortcuts have been around since the first Mac in 1984, and before the first version of Windows.
Click to expand...

oh my god man... I don't know... just give him a break! ;)
 
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ared said:
Hey guys,

Thanks for your help so far.

I shall try reformatting it.

And thank you for the shortcuts is well, it's nice to get them explained as some things I'm realizing are just apple quirks.
Click to expand...

Let us know if you need any more help... once you get a hang of OS X, it makes you wonder how did you endure those windows years.

About the shortcuts, check this and this out. They are simple tables of functions with their Windows and OS X equivalents. I'm sure this will help.

Now, about the drive... There are several types of formats for drives... If this external drive is high capacity (>32GB) then you should use either:

a) NTFS (windows compatible, but you'll need a 3rd party app to format and write on it, as you've seen).... if this drive is to be used mostly with PCs or smart TVs... or

b) Mac OS Extended format (jornaled) if this drive will only be used with Macs. More on this below.

FAT32 is usually reserved for thumb drives and small capacity drives - as it's not very efficient for high capacity drives, even when OS X can read/write them natively. ExFAT is a newer format (relatively) and while it has no practical limits on capacity, it also seems to work better for flash/thumb drives. Here is a clear explanation on these Windows options.

Here are some simple instructions on OS X drive formatting - ignore the Apperture part.

It's also important to note that you can partition the drive (create two separate volumes on one drive) and have one partition as Mac OS Extended (journaled) for OS X, and another one as NTFS for Windows, in case its a shared drive - but I wouldn't recommend doing this if the files are critical or backup files, since sharing such drive poses obvious dangers.

So, in case you wish several partitions, or if you plan to use the drive as a backup/clone/system startup drive (OS X or windows), you should also check the type of partition when you format it, as explained here.

Hope this helps. Good luck.
 
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