Moving files from PC external HD to new mac external HD

[skowser]

New Macbook pro owner.

I have an external HD connected to my PC which contains all of my music, video, photo, etc files. I recently purchased a new 1TB LaCie d2 quadra drive to use with my macbook.

Both of these drives are currently connected to my mac so i can move the files from one drive to another. I understand that the mac cannot write to the NTFS drive but it can read from it. I thought the best way to move the files over would be through the mac, i.e. using finder to move the files from one volume to the other. Is this the best, easiest way? or is there another way?

 

[spinnerlys]

That is an okay solution and should not create any problems.

FAT32

• Read/Write FAT32 from both native Windows and native Mac OS X.
• No individual file larger than 4GB.

NTFS

• Read/Write NTFS from native Windows.
• Read only NTFS from native Mac OS X
• To Read/Write NTFS from Leopard: Install MacFUSE and NTFS-3G. You can install both with NTFS-3G for Mac OS X.
• To Read/Write NTFS from Snow Leopard: Guide: Enable native NTFS Read/Write in Snow Leopard
• (Be aware that some are of the opinion that enabling native NTFS in SL is unstable/unreliable, and favor the MacFuse/NTFS-3G method for Snow Leopard)

HFS

• Read/Write HFS from native Mac OS X
• To Read/Write HFS from Windows, Install MacDrive
• To Read HFS (but not Write) from Windows, Install HFSExplorer

 

[skowser]

Thanks.

One problem is this folder is showing up on my mac as havng zero bytes when i KNOW it has about 160GB of music files (mp3, FLAC)

 

[spinnerlys]

It is because you went via Macintosh HD / Volumes / HDD instead of just clicking on the HDD icon in the Finder Sidebar.

The Finder Sidebar:

Also have a look at the following links to learn more about Mac OS X:

Mac OS X Basics, Malware, Software and other useful links

Helpful Information for Any Mac User by GGJstudios​

 

[skowser]

I navigated to the folder the way you described but got the same result. Also, i tried to just copy and paste that folder from one HD to the other ad when it started copying the transfer was only 23.something GB not the full folder...i'm a little confused. I copied about 400GB's of video files without a problem to and from the same drives using the same steps.