MacBook Pro recognizes external hard drive but not the files

[alexverrette]

I have just bought this MacBook Pro and am also a PC user. I want to transfer files that i have from my PC that i have backed up on my external hard drive. When i try to use my external hard drive on my Mac it recognizes it as well as the folders in the drive. Although when i try to go into the folders there is nothing there apparently. But when i use my hard drive on my PC It recognizes the files and the folders inside. Is there some kind of program that i need to download to recognize those files on my Mac? Any kind of settings i need to change on my Mac or hard drive?


MacBook Pro, OS X Yosemite (10.10.4)

 

[snaky69]

Would your external hard drive happen be to NTFS formatted by any chance?

 

[alexverrette]

Would your external hard drive happen be to NTFS formatted by any chance?

It's not but i do have some kind of software on my Mac to let me read and write to the Drive. Now for some reason it is recognizing the files. It's about 500 gigs of data, my thought is that it needs some time to really recognize all of the files in the multiple folders. The files i'm looking to get the most is the Music and there is about 100 gigs of music on the drive. I'm not sure if that changes anything

 

[snaky69]

It's not but i do have some kind of software on my Mac to let me read and write to the Drive. Now for some reason it is recognizing the files. It's about 500 gigs of data, my thought is that it needs some time to really recognize all of the files in the multiple folders. The files i'm looking to get the most is the Music and there is about 100 gigs of music on the drive. I'm not sure if that changes anything

You don't need any software to read and write to a hard drive on OS X unless it is NTFS formatted. Have you installed something like Tuxera or Paragon-NTFS? Either one is probably the culprit of your problems.

I'd copy all files over to another drive, format it using disk utility to FAT32 or ExFAT and copy the files back over.

 

[Fishrrman]

OP:

If you can't get the problem resolved with the external drive you have, I suggest you use a USB flashdrive for the transfers.

Try initializing it "on the Mac side" (using Disk Utility) and use the "MSDOS (Fat)" option in the "erase" panel.

Then see if the PC recognizes it. If it does, connect the external drive, copy to flashdrive, then copy to Mac.

More than one trip between computers may be needed...