Mac to PC transfer

[EmmaK]

Hi Brian, Please could you advise?
Is there a way of moving my images from a apple mac drive to a pc one? My mac is coming to end of life as it's very old. I don't have the money to spend on a new one, so I am wanting to move it to pc for the time being.

[Brian]

It's possible, and I will warn you, it's a bit of a pain in the ass. Apple makes things really easy going from a Windows Computer to a Mac, but not the other way around.

If you have decent internet speed, you could try some sort of cloud service, such as Dropbox, One-Drive, Google Drive, etc. That is probably the easiest way. Otherwise, you are using  a blank (new) EHD, partitioned and formatted on a PC, then you would use software on your Mac to act as a translator. Unfortunately, it seems the software that I once ran doesn't seem to be around any longer, which complicates things. That said, there is one program that you will need to buy and it's been around forever. It's called Paragon HFS+ and it's $20. This software you install on your Windows Computer and then all you have to do is hook up your external Mac Formatted HD to your Windows PC and the Paragon software should be able to access it. Here is the website: HFS+ for Windows by Paragon Software. Then copy the files from the Mac Drive to a New Windows External Drive, formatted with NTFS and if it's above 4TB, it will use a GPT-based Partition.

The easiest way is to obtain a 32GB USB Flash Drive, make sure you format it to a FAT32 Partition on the Windows Computer, and then copy and paste files. Why 32GB? Because FAT32 really was only meant to go up to 32GB. Why format it on a Windows Computer? For whatever reason, I have found Partitioning drives that are meant to be on a Windows Computer should be partitioned and formatted on said Windows computer. Apple's MacOS doesn't always create a FAT32 Partition correctly, and I don't know why. Sometimes it works, other times it doesn't. Now 32GB these days won't help you when you have multiple Terabytes of data, which leads to the next paragraph.

The other way is to turn on file sharing, and this is a complicated process. For Techie-Nerds like myself, it's not too bad. For the majority of people out there, it's a "Science Project." It also really helps things if your Windows computer is the "Professional" version and not the "Home" Edition, (i.e. Windows 10 Pro.) The Pro versions make networking so much easier, it's built for this sort of thing. In any case, you will use COPY & PASTE and NOT CUT AND PASTE. You want to keep your source files intact; this way if anything were to screw up, you can do things over again. When you Cut/Move files, it deletes the source file. Anyway, it's best to make your IP addresses on all computers Static and I'd create a special login account on your Windows computer that is just meant for file transfer and establish a Workgroup. If these terms sound a bit new to you, then File-sharing might be a bit of a challenge, though doable.

When it's all said and done, I'd buy a new External Drive and get the Paragon Software.

[EmmaK]

Thanks Brian, you're an absolute star. I'm far from being a techie nurd, so I will opt for the easier version. (All be it not easy for me ??)