New guy - Files from external HD (windows)

New guy here. Just purchased a mbp and have been playing around with it. It is my first Apple computer, though I do have an iphone 5. So far, so good. I have WD passbook that I backed up all my digital photos from my pc. I have literally hundreds, if not a thousand. I would like to import some of them into my mbp. Is this possible? What's the best way to go about it? Thanks for your help - I appreciate it.

Yes, it's certainly possible. You should be able to just plug it in and start copying files from it. Now, do note that NTFS-formatted drives (the default Windows format) is read-only by default on Mac OS X, so you won't be able to write to it. But if you choose to keep this format, you can add a 3rd party driver to enable writes to it as well.

Thanks, I was hoping so. Got a little confused when I noticed that the passbook's were offered in both pc and mac versions. I'm guessing that difference is that the mac version would allow writing?

Thanks for the help!

jkmola said:

Thanks, I was hoping so. Got a little confused when I noticed that the passbook's were offered in both pc and mac versions. I'm guessing that difference is that the mac version would allow writing?

Thanks for the help!

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The big difference is in how they come pre-formatted from the factory. The Mac "version" is formatted with HFS+, the Mac's native filesystem and the Windows version if formatted NTFS.

It's not a big deal and I'm not even sure why they make this distinction. You can re-format to the filesystem of your choosing any time.

If you're going to be sharing that drive between Windows machines and your Mac, your best bet is to leave it as NTFS and get a third party NTFS driver like Paragon's excellent "NTFS for Mac" (about $20).