Mac to WIN eHDD reformatting for client. Need help ASAP please

[TheBeastman13]

Hi, All

I shot a wedding for a friend back in August and the couple is just now giving me their external HDD(western digital my passport) for me to transfer all the media I shot from the wedding.

I've been presented a curveball: the formats of my drive and theirs are different. I have my Seagate drive formatted to Mac, and their WD is formatted NTFS for WIndows.

I have to move 75 GB of media from my drive to theirs. How do I go about transferring the media?

If I plug my Seagate(formatted for Mac) into my dad's Windows-based desktop to try to make te transfer, will I lose or corrupt my Seagate data I've been working on from my MacBook ? I have 220 GB of videography work, school papers, and photographs on my Seagate I cannot lose.

Thank you for your help! I need to return their drive Friday so I can get paid, so I'd like to resolve this soon.

Sincerely,

Brandon Eastman

 

[hallux]

Can you get both computers on a network together? If so, connect to the Windows laptop from the Mac using an account on the Windows computer then copy the files to an internal drive on the system and from there to the external using Windows Explorer. http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT5884

The other option would be to format their external as ExFAT or FAT32 (this one has a 2 GB per file limitation). This would be an issue if they have data on the drive that needs to be saved.

 

[TheBeastman13]

Can you get both computers on a network together? If so, connect to the Windows laptop from the Mac using an account on the Windows computer then copy the files to an internal drive on the system and from there to the external using Windows Explorer. http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT5884

The other option would be to format their external as ExFAT or FAT32 (this one has a 2 GB per file limitation). This would be an issue if they have data on the drive that needs to be saved.

As per that link provided, I'll try that tomorrow. It's late and I don't have access to the windows desktop right now.

As for FAT32, most of the files I need to transfer, especially the final cut for the DVD( 8.1GB), are 5-8 GB large

 

[CaptainWD]

Hey TheBeastman13,

Do your clients need the data on their drive? You could format their drive as FAT32 (if you don't have files over 4GB and an overall size of the drive over 2TB. This way you could read/write on that drive on both Windows and MAC OS.
Your other option is to format their drive as exFAT, avoiding any file limitations.
You could use a cloud-based transfer type. If you have a router with a USB slot, just plug in the external drive there and transfer the data over the network to the drive without formatting it (depends on what format does the router require).

Captain_WD.

 

[TheBeastman13]

Hey TheBeastman13,

Do your clients need the data on their drive? You could format their drive as FAT32 (if you don't have files over 4GB and an overall size of the drive over 2TB. This way you could read/write on that drive on both Windows and MAC OS.
Your other option is to format their drive as exFAT, avoiding any file limitations.
You could use a cloud-based transfer type. If you have a router with a USB slot, just plug in the external drive there and transfer the data over the network to the drive without formatting it (depends on what format does the router require).

Captain_WD.

Yes, the clients want all the media backed up on their hard drive. Don't know the reasoning, but that is what they asked of me.

This is my first big project, so I'm tackling problems never occurring to me before. Live and learn!

I'm thinking of buying a second external drive bc I'm afraid of losing all my school work that is on the same drive as this wedding media.

 

[CaptainWD]

Yes, the clients want all the media backed up on their hard drive. Don't know the reasoning, but that is what they asked of me.

This is my first big project, so I'm tackling problems never occurring to me before. Live and learn!

I'm thinking of buying a second external drive bc I'm afraid of losing all my school work that is on the same drive as this wedding media.

Experimenting with data is always risky, regardless if it is a common thing or not. A backup is always a good idea.
Depending on how much space you have free on your computer, you can back their files on it, format their drive and simply restore it. Check the files and if they are not that big (over 2GB each) use FAT32. If not - exFAT is also a good option for data transfer and carry.