Transfer Files from External Hard Drive

I just got a Mac (thank god I missed my old one so much) but had a temporary Dell to tide me over (it was free so I couldn't complain). I saved everything on it on my external hard drive and when I went to transfer the files to my mac a window popped up giving me the options to "Initialize Drive...", "Ignore", or "Eject". I clicked Initialize Drive and it opened up the Disc Utility window. It told me I will have to verify the files, after which it told me I need to recover (I think, this is going on memory because I'm at work) the files. I didn't proceed with this option because I don't want to chance losing my files. I took the hard drive to work and the files still appear just as they were on the PCs at work. Any idea what I can do to reformat the drive to be able to transfer the files to my mac??

Don't reformat because you will wipe the external drive clean. What it is doing is the drive is not recognised because the dell machine has initialised for windows only such fat32 or higher. Best you could do if you still have the dell is to link up via network and share that way through a router.

leadfoot said:

Don't reformat because you will wipe the external drive clean. What it is doing is the drive is not recognised because the dell machine has initialised for windows only such fat32 or higher. Best you could do if you still have the dell is to link up via network and share that way through a router.

Click to expand...

I don't still have the Dell but I have a computer at work I can use. Any chance you could walk me through the steps of linking them up through the network to share the files through a router? Not completely sure what that means.

Ah! you might have a issue there because your hard drive might be OEM for the Dell machine only.
Pending on the need for the files if the other computer has firewire a plug similar to usb then you could hook up both mac and pc with pc being a slave external drive.
You could use a dvd disc of the size 8gb and compress the files to the disk might take long to burn but the files are saved.
1. Check this hard drive is able to go into another pc without issues or request for formatting.
2. long winded route is to look at the back of the hard drive for jumper pins where the power and computer cable is another slot for jumper pins. There you can select Slave 1-5. Pull jumper pin with tweezers or fingers : : : : : into slave or 2-5 if the pin is in 1.
3. Next open the spare computer you have and look for a spare sata red cable or 40 pin ide cable with a spare plug normally for cdrom or dvd drives.
4. Attach the power cable last and close not seal because you want to see if the main drive already in the spare computer kick in or start up okay. Hopefully.
5. If okay and windows displays normally go to explorer and see if the added drive appears.
6. If the drive is okay click on and see if your files appear without any issue.

Macs can read fat32 and NTFS drives just fine. They can not write to NTFS drives without special software.
If your mac is giving you 'Cannot read this drive' you have other problems.
This external, is it USB or firewire or esata? If USB, are you using a hub? Is it buss-powered?

cradom said:

Macs can read fat32 and NTFS drives just fine. They can not write to NTFS drives without special software.
If your mac is giving you 'Cannot read this drive' you have other problems.
This external, is it USB or firewire or esata? If USB, are you using a hub? Is it buss-powered?

Click to expand...

It's USB. I'm not sure if the actual message is "Cannot Read"; again I'll have to try it again tonight to quote exactly what the message is. I am able to access the files on my work computer though. Would I be able to connect the two computers via usb and transfer that way? or DVD?

I'm not particularly sure what the instructions above are describing as I'm not very computer literate.

How many files and how large? Can use DVD or something like Dropbox if not too large. Better yet get a flash drive.
You still should be able to read the external drive on your mac unless it's pass-worded or something like that.

wootah

Basically the accurate post from cradom shows a major difference between Mac and Windows: the file system.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_systems

Dell do have a special recovery partition, but this has never been an issue with READING from any Mac with OSX that I have used.

If you are using USB with the drive removed from the Dell, you shouldn't have any issue.

As you seem to want to access it from a NETWORK, you first need to enable sharing on the Windows machine.

This option may be disabled if it is a corporate build machine.

Normally you would do this:

To share a drive or folder on the network

1. Open Windows Explorer, and then locate the drive or folder you want to share.

2. Right-click the drive or folder, and then click Sharing and Security.
• If you are sharing a drive, on the Sharing tab, click If you understand the risk but still want to share the root of the drive, click here.
• If you are sharing a folder, go to the next step.

3. Do one of the following:
• If the Share this folder on the network check box is available, select the check box.
• If the Share this folder on the network check box is unavailable, this computer is not on a network. If you would like to set up a home or small office network, click the Network Setup Wizard link and follow the instructions to turn on file sharing. Once file sharing is enabled, begin this procedure again.

You'll have to name it so you can see it, making it easier to see from the Mac over the network.

On the Mac Finder menu (where you see all the folders) use the connect to server option from the Go menu - or CMD + K

You will probably need a SAMBA share name e.g. smb://dellserial

Find your Dell on the network, connect and wait. The drive will be attached underneath.

In case no one noticed it, this is an external, USB drive to which he copied his data.
This is not an internal Dell drive that was put in an external enclosure.
The easiest way to get the files if you cant get it to mount on the Mac is to use another PC and copy to a flash drive or burn to a cd (flash drive is easier, don't have to use cd's).

At least that's what I got from the original post.

Re-read the first post and it seems this is a pre-exisitng USB drive which may have had the data saved all the time mootah was using the (red herring) Dell.

One trick I have just used is the external USB port of my Modem / Router. I enabled sharing from the internal (non-Mac) modem interface.

I transferred the work files at Gigabit speed to a new Mac formatted archive drive.

Some routers only accept Windows formatted drives, so that could also be an option in this case.

(p.s. Well read through cradom, overtired on a Friday missed some details ;-) )