How do you reformat an external hard drive that is formatted to a PC to be MAC compatible?

Question

I just switched from being a PC user to a MAC user and need to put the info stored on my external hard drive onto my new MAC. Please help.

Answer 1

You don't need to juggle any flash drive to copy files from an external NTFS drive. The Mac can read the NTFS fine. What is stopping you from copying the files? Are you getting an error message? Is the drive not appearing in a Finder window? Maybe your connecting cord is bad.

You ask how to format the drive but I don't know why you want to do that. In Mac terms, format means erase. All data would be lost. To erase the drive, open Disk Utility, choose the Erase tab, select the drive at the left and set the format to what you want. Mac Extended (journaled) is best unless you want to share the drive with a Windows system since they cannot even mount such a druve without installing MacDrive on the Windows system. MS DOS File System (FAT32) is best if you want to share the drive with a Windows system but it is limited to file sizes up to 4GB. NTFS is better for sharing with a Windows system if you will be using files larger than 4GB but OS X cannot write to it unless you install "NTFS for Mac". You would format NTFS from a Windows system.

Answer 2

Hi,

Do you want to transfer the data from the external HD to the mac or just refomat the ext hd ?

If you want to transfer the data, you have two options.

1- If the ext. hd is FAT32 formatted, you can plug it in the mac and copy the data. Mac OS X can read FAT32 formatted drives. To know if your drive is FAT32, plug it in your mac: if it mounts on the desktop, then it's FAT 32, else... well...

2- If the drive is NTFS formatted, you can copy the data on a USB flash drive and then plug the USB drive in the mac and copy your files. A USB flash drive is very inexpensive (about 30$ for 1 GB) but if you have a large drive to copy it could take a long time... you coud also make a local network by connecting your two computers with an ethernet cable and share the drive... but that would take too long to explain here...

Reply if you have trouble and I will probably be here to help you