Transfering photos from an external PC-formatted drive to an external Mac Drive

Hello,

This is my first post, and I'm looking for some assistance from you knowledgable chaps.

I am some what of a photo hoarder and in the last year made the move from PC for Mac Book Pro. I have a lot of photos stored on external hardrives (a seagate Passport as well as and old Buffalo hardrive) both of which are formatted to PC.

I haven't figured out a way that I'm able to access these pictures through my macbook, and have assumed (perhaps wrongly!?) that I need to purchase a new hardrive which is formatted for IOS. I then need to somehow transfer these photos. It also makes sense for me to move my current iPhotos from my macbook onto the external drive to free up some space.

Can anyone offer any advice on this process and if I need to acquire an special software to do it?

Sorry for the ramble....but I think I covered it all.

Thanks

Matthew

Welcome to the Mac Forums!

When you say the drives are formatted for a PC that can mean several things: They're formatted to NTFS (Windows file system) or FAT-32 (MS DOS). Only the latter is read and write from a Mac. So which is it? If the drives are formatted to NTFS, we can suggest a driver (which must be purchased) that will render them read and write from your Mac. Also, any hard drive purchased from a store can be reformatted to work with a Mac.

Denster01 said:

I haven't figured out a way that I'm able to access these pictures through my macbook, and have assumed (perhaps wrongly!?) that I need to purchase a new hardrive which is formatted for IOS.

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You have assumed wrongly on two fronts:

1. Macs have no problem reading PC-formatted drives, so copying photos FROM a PC-formatted drive to your Mac is not an issue. Just plug it in and copy.

(Macs can't natively WRITE to NTFS-formatted PC drives, but that's not relevant in a copying operation that's going from the drive to the Mac.)

2. iOS is the system used by Apple's mobile devices, the iPhone, the iPad and iPod Touch. It is not the same as OS X, which is what the Mac uses. To use a drive with the Mac, it is best to format it for OS X (mandatory if the drive is to be used for booting, but otherwise optional).

I then need to somehow transfer these photos. It also makes sense for me to move my current iPhotos from my macbook onto the external drive to free up some space.

Click to expand...

Your iPhoto library (and you can have more than one) can reside on any drive you like, but it should be formatted for OS X. So you probably DO need to buy an external drive, format it for OS X and eventually move your iPhoto library(ies) there.

Nothing special is required. Move your iPhoto library(ies) to (let's call it) your new Media Drive. Hook up your PC-formatted drives, drag the photos into iPhoto, properly dismount your PC-formatted drive, repeat as needed.

Denster01 said:

I haven't figured out a way that I'm able to access these pictures through my macbook...

Click to expand...

This means what? You've connected the drives and couldn't see them on your Mac or you've never connected them to your Mac?

Hook up your PC-formatted drives, drag the photos into iPhoto

Click to expand...

If you want to then view your pictures in iPhoto WITHOUT having to re-connect that external drive, go into iPhoto Preferences>Advanced, and make sure that the "Copy Items to iPhoto Libray" is ticked before you import.

I use Paragon NTFS for Mac OS X software

This allows me to write to an NTFS drive from my Mac. You don't have to reformat or anything.