Another stupid PC to Mac post

I'm sorry if this was answered in 2008 already but my searches in the forums seem to come up short of what I am looking to answer.

I purchased a Mac last year and have been using LR3 to import my photos directly from my CF reader. However, I have about 200GB of photos that are on an external from before I purchased the Mac that I would like to bring over. I'm assuming I can use LR3 to do this.

The problem I have is that my Mac doesn't recognize my external. Is this because it was files transfered onto my external from a Windows machine? I see that you can get externals just for Mac so I'm wondering what I have to do to get these 200GB of photos on my Mac.

I'm an idiot so please don't be mean in your responses or tell me to Google it. I've read a lot and still confused on what the heck to do.

Thanks!

I am not sure about lightroom but I think that since it uses the catalog system or storing its information you would just have to sync up where the photos are in your hard drive. (Don't quote me on this someone else might be able to explain it much better than I can.)

For the second question It might have to do with the format of the drive. Sounds like the Hard drive is NTFS, although I am not sure this is the real problem since you can't see the drive...on your mac? I suppose if this is the case I would try to find someone and borrow it to transfer 200gigs. or look up NTFS for mac.

I do have external just for mac its great for just using on the mac but I do use it on PC's therefore you need to use FAT 32 or something similar so both systems can read and write to it. You could probably look up this information for more details on your own.

I hope this helps.

mac reads ntfs without any problems. it just cant write. so basically osx can read any windows file system. if your mac cannot even detect your external drive, then there might be something wrong with the drive. have you tried it on another windows pc or mac to make sure your drive actually works?

Yes, I have hooked up my external to 2 pc's and both see it fine. That is why I was so confused because my understanding was that the Mac should see it but not necessarily write to it.

I have access to our corporate Dropbox account (35TB) so I'm thinking of just uploading to Dropbox this weekend and then down to my Mac. From there I can backup using My Book Studio or another external that works with Mac.

does the drive even mount? To check that it is there use the disc utility to see if it even sees the drive in the system.

Copy the 200gb to your pc. Confirm they are alive and happy on the pc. Reformat the external fat32. Place 1 test file on the external. Connect it to your Mac, can you see the file? Can you add a second test file from the Mac? Can you delete the test files on the external from the Mac? If so, go back to the pc and copy the files to the external ( check out robocopy, a free command line copy exe ).

Atach the external to the Mac. Fire up LR. Import files via LR. It will index them and know they live on the external, of course if the external is disconnected later and you try to access the files, it will say the file is missing. Reconnect the external and you are back in business....just don't rename the external device or move files around outside of LR or it will orphan the index.

As mentioned, connect the drive (I assume it's USB2?) and run Disk Utility to see if it shows up. If it doesn't, then choose the apple in the upper left corner, About this Mac > More Info and see if it's showing up on the USB bus.

MDEphoto wrote in post #14284469
I see that you can get externals just for Mac so I'm wondering what I have to do to get these 200GB of photos on my Mac.


Thanks!

In regards to this, the mac specific drives are no different than the PC versions other than they are formatted for mac and can cost a premium for those that dont know otherwise.

imjason wrote in post #14284860
mac reads ntfs without any problems. it just cant write. so basically osx can read any windows file system. if your mac cannot even detect your external drive, then there might be something wrong with the drive. have you tried it on another windows pc or mac to make sure your drive actually works?

Tony-S wrote in post #14287083
As mentioned, connect the drive (I assume it's USB2?) and run Disk Utility to see if it shows up. If it doesn't, then choose the apple in the upper left corner, About this Mac > More Info and see if it's showing up on the USB bus.

These.

Even my Hackintosh reads/writes to FW, USB 2 and USB 3 without problem. Connect another device to verify the ports on the Mac....and....put your external drive on another computer to verify the drive. The problem can be on the Mac (not likely) or the external drive.

tdp_photos wrote in post #14286959
Copy the 200gb to your pc. Confirm they are alive and happy on the pc. Reformat the external fat32. Place 1 test file on the external. Connect it to your Mac, can you see the file? Can you add a second test file from the Mac? Can you delete the test files on the external from the Mac? If so, go back to the pc and copy the files to the external ( check out robocopy, a free command line copy exe ).

Atach the external to the Mac. Fire up LR. Import files via LR. It will index them and know they live on the external, of course if the external is disconnected later and you try to access the files, it will say the file is missing. Reconnect the external and you are back in business....just don't rename the external device or move files around outside of LR or it will orphan the index.

I am in the middle of a Mac evacuation back to windows7. One thing I learned is to make an external drive compatible with both systems consider using your win7 machine to format in exFat rather than Fat32. Best of both worlds.

Good luck