KVR Audio

Carpenter · Post by **Carpenter** » Sun Sep 11, 2016 11:44 am

I am very frustrated. I have a TON of work on my Macbook Pro, but it's old and I can't afford a new one. So, I purchased a pc laptop and now I am regretting it big tiime.

I NEED to be able to transfer all of the work on my Mac to my new PC, but NONE of the TEN external hard drives that I have tried will READ AND WRITE on BOTH machines.

I need to be able to plug an external in my Mac, copy files to it and then plug that same external into my PC and put move those files to my PC.

I have even tried moving all of my files with a flash drive, since both machines will at least recognize the drive. Even THAT doesn't work. The files that I put on the flashdrive with my Mac ONLY show up when the drive is plugged into the Mac and the files that I put on the flashdrive with my PC, ONLY show up when the drive is plugged into the PC.

I even formatted one external to exFAT and the drive doesn't even register when I plug it into my my Mac. It's completely ignored.

How is it possible to transfer ones Mac files to a PC, when you buy an external that works ONLY on one platform or the other?

Am I trapped into only buying Macs for the rest of my life?

woggle · Post by **woggle** » Sun Sep 11, 2016 11:55 am

I've not had problems with exFAT to transfer between PC and MAc (Toshiba Canvio drive and I think a WD ) so I think there must be a Mac setting rather than a problem with drives

chk071 · Post by **chk071** » Sun Sep 11, 2016 11:58 am

If none of your files are bigger than 4 GB, you can format your external drive to FAT32 too, which both platforms will be able to read. But maybe exFat works too indeed, as woggle wrote.

woggle · Post by **woggle** » Sun Sep 11, 2016 12:09 pm

looks like the formatting is different for older macs (maybe, I am not a mac user) but here are some instructions for earlier versions of OSX

http://support.wdc.com/KnowledgeBase/answer.aspx?ID=291

Jace-BeOS · Post by **Jace-BeOS** » Sun Sep 11, 2016 12:12 pm

In my experience, FAT32 is the only file system that both operating system can read from AND write to. All else is read-only or not even readable at all without adding file system drivers (which I do NOT recommend). I recommend that you format the FAT32 volume from the PC, not from the Mac.

The safest way to do this is to network the drives/computers and do all file transfers via networking. The network transfer will make the drive formatting irrelivant. If the Mac cannot see the Windows share, or the Windows machine cannot see the Mac shares, you might need to manually map drives with explicit network paths (I've found this to be the case as the network support has changed over the years in each OS and their discoverability has changed from "works fine" to "why can't I see my shares?"). If you don't have a home wifi network, or if one computer doesn't have wifi, an Ethernet hub can help here. Direct Ethernet cable connections can work as networks too, if you use a crossover cable (a regular straight Ethernet cable won't work).

Jace-BeOS · Post by **Jace-BeOS** » Sun Sep 11, 2016 12:13 pm

PS: Network file transfers will also eliminate the trouble to damaging Mac-specific file system data by dumping Mac files onto a FAT32 volume (FAT32 doesn't support meta data / data forks like HFS+).

fmr · Post by **fmr** » Sun Sep 11, 2016 12:18 pm

No, you can also work with NTFS in Mac OS X (both read and write). For that, you need to buy Paragon NTFS for Mac (very cheap, and extremely useful for someone working in both platforms, like me). Buy it, and all the NTFS formatted hard-drives you have will be both readable and writable in both OS X and Windows. FAT32 is a very old format, and should NOT be used with current Windows systems, execpt for small archive devices, like USB pen drives.

Jace-BeOS · Post by **Jace-BeOS** » Sun Sep 11, 2016 12:50 pm

Thanks for mentioning that, fmr, I was unaware of this product. It got a good review here: http://www.macworld.com/article/3027638 ... lumes.html

tehlord · Post by **tehlord** » Sun Sep 11, 2016 12:53 pm

Dropbox

zvenx · Post by **zvenx** » Sun Sep 11, 2016 1:02 pm

What OS is your mac running on?
I have two music computers. My Main PC Daw running Nuendo Windows 10, and macbook pro running Cubase and Yosemite.
On the PC I have macdrive, and both computers along with other macs are all in my home network. I also have NAS drives and hard drives attached to other macs that are part of the system.
I don't have issues transferring Files from one to the other.... Like someone did say macs can read but not write to NTFS without third party software, but beyond that I don't have any gotchas in my setup and I backup and move files between both systems several times a day.

rsp

Jolaff · Post by **Jolaff** » Sun Sep 11, 2016 5:44 pm

Carpenter wrote: I even formatted one external to exFAT and the drive doesn't even register when I plug it into my my Mac. It's completely ignored.

It's supposed to work. I would try to format it in exFat with Disk Utility on your mac.

I have a HDD formated in Fat 32 (Ms-dos fat) and I can read and write from Windows/Linux/Mac.

What version of OSX do you have?

pekbro · Post by **pekbro** » Mon Sep 12, 2016 1:58 am

Unless they changed something, mac should be able to read NTFS just fine,
you have to enable it with the disk tool or whatever IIRC.

If you go back to 10.4 you have to install a 3rd party thing. But
not after 10.6.

The problem is that this is not bidirectional, windows is not going to
be able to read the journaled file system from a mac no matter what you do.

You should be able to format the drives to NTFS, then mount them with the mac.
You probably have to enable this with the disc tool.

Its been a few years, so I cant offer specifics.

-Cheers

*Linux is also a good option, it would be no problem for puppy linux for instance.
Load puppy from a pen drive, use it to move the files however you want.

fmr · Post by **fmr** » Mon Sep 12, 2016 9:31 am

pekbro wrote:Unless they changed something, mac should be able to read NTFS just fine,
you have to enable it with the disk tool or whatever IIRC.

If you go back to 10.4 you have to install a 3rd party thing. But
not after 10.6.

The problem is that this is not bidirectional, windows is not going to
be able to read the journaled file system from a mac no matter what you do.

You should be able to format the drives to NTFS, then mount them with the mac.
You probably have to enable this with the disc tool.

*Linux is also a good option, it would be no problem for puppy linux for instance.
Load puppy from a pen drive, use it to move the files however you want.

You can READ from but not WRITE to NTFS disks. With Paragon NTFS for Mac, you can then READ and WRITE. Problem solved. Stop this rubbish about Linux, exFAT and whatever. Why complicate what can and should remain simple? And do not format disks in foreign file systems on the Mac. Do that in Windows. It's safer.

pekbro · Post by **pekbro** » Mon Sep 12, 2016 11:10 am

Of course you would format NTFS with windows...

Puppy linux wouldn't require formating anything but a usb stick. And its
completely free.

-Cheers

whyterabbyt · Post by **whyterabbyt** » Mon Sep 12, 2016 11:22 am

fmr wrote:You can READ from but not WRITE to NTFS disks. With Paragon NTFS for Mac, you can then READ and WRITE. Problem solved. Stop this rubbish about Linux, exFAT and whatever. Why complicate what can and should remain simple? And do not format disks in foreign file systems on the Mac. Do that in Windows. It's safer.

You can FORMAT, READ from and WRITE to exFAT disks on both OSX and Windows. There's no need for Paragon NTFS for Mac or anything else, you since you can already READ and WRITE exFAT. Problem solved. Stop this rubbish about Linux, Paragon, NTFS and whatever. Why complicate what can and should remain simple? Format on Windows, though, its format is properly standard.

Is It Impossible To Move My Files From Mac To PC?