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Moving photos from Mac to PC. PC doesn't see the files?

tenthumbs

tenthumbs

Senior member
I recently built a new PC with Windows 10. I moved almost a TB of photos from an iMac to an external drive with the intention of loading them on the new PC.

The new PC doesn't see any of the files on the external hard drive. What do I need to do to get the PC to recognize the files?

Thank you
 
How did you move the photos? And what are the photos from? If it's like iPhoto, those photos are generally in a Mac proprietary format unless you Export them.
 
95% of these photos are jpeg or RAW files. I dragged the photo files from the MAC hard drive to the external drive.
 
Did you format the drive with a universally accessible filsystem such as EXFAT or FAT32? If it was formatted by the Mac in default HFS+, Windows can't read that.
 
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Not formatting the files, formatting the drive. You said currently your new PC doesn't "see" any files. What *exactly* happens when you plug in your drive? Does it ask you for Format the disk before you can use it?
 
The new PC sees the external drive but it appears as if it's completely empty. None of the files show up at all. It doesn't ask me to format the disk.
 
The disk doesn't show up in "This PC"

It does show up when I go into Disk Management but it doesn't allow me to assign it a drive letter.
 
Is there no File System listed in Windows? If it can't see it, then my assumption is that you have the disk formatted using Mac's HFS+ vs. EXFAT. What does "Disk Utility" on OS X consider the disk?
 
Exactly then. You have the disk formatted in Apple's proprietary file system HFS+, which Windows can't read natively. You'll need to re-format the disk to a mutually usable format like EXFAT, then copy the files back on. If you want the files as they are and don't want to re-export, you can always copy the files off to a temporary directory on you Mac, then copy them back on after you re-format your disk. My recommendation would be to format the disk using Windows, as the way some versions of Mac OS format a disk, even as EXFAT, is not readable by Windows. A disk formatted as EXFAT on Windows is readable by both Windows and Mac OS Systems.
 
thecoolnessrune said:
Exactly then. You have the disk formatted in Apple's proprietary file system HFS+, which Windows can't read natively. You'll need to re-format the disk to a mutually usable format like EXFAT, then copy the files back on. If you want the files as they are and don't want to re-export, you can always copy the files off to a temporary directory on you Mac, then copy them back on after you re-format your disk. My recommendation would be to format the disk using Windows, as the way some versions of Mac OS format a disk, even as EXFAT, is not readable by Windows. A disk formatted as EXFAT on Windows is readable by both Windows and Mac OS Systems.
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Thank you! I will follow your instructions. I appreciate your help.
 
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