External Hard Drive

[bainesy69]

Hello

I've just changed over to an apple iMac and have a lot of photos and data stored on an HD Elements external hard drive.
I understand I need to reformat the EHD as it is currently formatted NTFS for windows.
My question is, how do I open the EHD on my mac to save the stored data before I reformat it? The reformatting I get, but not what to do with the files before I reformat it.
Sorry if this is a really dim question but I'd hate to lose my files.

Many thanks for your help

 

[Slydude]

Plug the drive into your Mac. The Mac should be able to read files on the drive with few/no problems. You can then copy the files to another drive.

 

[bainesy69]

Thanks for your reply Slydude.

I plugged it in, clicked on finder and then devices but with no luck.

Any other suggestions?

 

[Slydude]

Go to Finder Preferences and click the General tab. Make sure that "external disks" is checked. That might not be the issue but worth a shot.

 

[gsahli]

And give us more details - what year/model iMac? OS X version?
Does the EHD have its own power supply?

The fact that you can't see the drive immediately upon plugging in USB is a concern!