From windows to Mac

Olly B

Olly B

Messages
161
Name
Jan
Edit My Images
No
Some years ago before I switched to a Mac, I had a few years of images on an external hard drive formatted for windows. I would like to retrieve the photos but my Mac will not recognise the hard drive (I no longer have a windows laptop). I have tried going into disc utility and whilst it shows the windows hard drive, that’s it, I can’t read or write or mount it. Any suggestions as to how to get round this?
 
Last edited:
I'm pretty sure all the "macos" versions can read a ntfs drive natively, but you do still need an add onto write to one. I've just reformatted a drive to ntfs and macos Sequoia 15.74 wont see the files, seems it a bug.
 
This is the trouble as systems develop over the years. , I had tons of photos on windows 5 I think it was but changing to a Mac years ago I lost them , then apple switched off aperture and over time I lost access to them . There probably all on old hard drives in my drawers ,but accessing them or even getting the drives to run is to time consuming for me
 
the black fox said:
This is the trouble as systems develop over the years. ,
Click to expand...
Agreed.

My solution has been to stick to the lowest common denominator, which I have found to be JPEG. This won't appeal to those who have special requirements for image quality but that has never been a big thing for me. In any case, I keep all my image files exactly as they come out of the camera and only work on copies.
 
the black fox said:
This is the trouble as systems develop over the years. , I had tons of photos on windows 5 I think it was but changing to a Mac years ago I lost them , then apple switched off aperture and over time I lost access to them . There probably all on old hard drives in my drawers ,but accessing them or even getting the drives to run is to time consuming for me
Click to expand...
It is usually possible to access older format images.

I have no propbem accessing my Aperture Libraries.
I have little difficulty accessing weird Windows drive formats.

The time you might spend on them will be dependent on how much you value the images.
 
AndrewFlannigan said:
Agreed.

My solution has been to stick to the lowest common denominator, which I have found to be JPEG. This won't appeal to those who have special requirements for image quality but that has never been a big thing for me. In any case, I keep all my image files exactly as they come out of the camera and only work on copies.
Click to expand...
jpeg is so lossy that it shouldn't be in a photographers armoury, except as output, or in specialist situations like sport. Even the latter is not really necessary nowadays with the speed of cards and cameras.
 
Pound Coin said:
jpeg is so lossy that it shouldn't be in a photographers armoury, except as output, or in specialist situations like sport. Even the latter is not really necessary nowadays with the speed of cards and cameras.
Click to expand...

Agree , although I do keep finished JPEGs, I always keep the Raws as well
Recently have re converted old Raws with more up to date software (DXO 8)
Last year I copied across some old Raws from old internal drives with a caddy as well as some on CDs
Was fun rediscovering and re editing old images
 
LCPete said:
Agree , although I do keep finished JPEGs, I always keep the Raws as well
Recently have re converted old Raws with more up to date software (DXO 8)
Last year I copied across some old Raws from old internal drives with a caddy as well as some on CDs
Was fun rediscovering and re editing old images
Click to expand...
I must do that with some of my “outstanding*” images from the past!

*Somewhat adequate :p
 
LCPete said:
Agree , although I do keep finished JPEGs, I always keep the Raws as well
Click to expand...
Sounds like a plan.

I imagine that 99.9% of people, who take pictures for pleasure, never use anything except JPEG, or whatever else is the default format for their device.
 
AndrewFlannigan said:
Sounds like a plan.

I imagine that 99.9% of people, who take pictures for pleasure, never use anything except JPEG, or whatever else is the default format for their device.
Click to expand...
Do agree that with a modern camera with a subject in good light a jpeg is perfectly fine
Sometimes with wildlife photography you can’t control the situation the subject could be backlight on in my case could mess up the exposure
For the OP could you go to a computer shop or specialist and ask them to copy the drive onto another one in Mac format
 
Last edited:
If the external drive is USB attached, you could try plugging it into the USB on your router if it has one. Might then be able to see it as a network drive on your Mac. I have done this before.

As mentioned already, MacOS can (should) read NTFS formatted drives natively, but can’t write to them. I updated my MacBook Air to Sequoia (15.7.5 I think) yesterday and have an NTFS external drive that has worked well in the past. Will see if I can still read from it today and come back.
 
I export all my processed RAWS as jpegs once a year (on new year's Day) and put them in Amazon photos and on my SSDs. Mainly because I may change from LR at some point in the future and don't want to lose my edits

I keep the raw files too of course and also back them up. But usually once I've edited a photo, I'm done with the edits. And having the jpg is just an 'additional' protection against software obsolescence
 
For future storage, formatting a drive to Exfat makes it more future proof, and as has been mentioned before I also keep all my "keepers" as the original RAW file and I keep the processed jpeg and never use software that insists on proprietary formats or saves files in its own container.
 
Just to conclude, I downloaded paragon software as suggested and my Mac immediately recognised the windows hard drive with all the images on it, happy days! I,m now busily copying all the ones that I want to process (again) into lightroom and will then save in the cloud I use. Nice to have access to some long forgotten images!
 
I had some issues with NTFS drives not showing up in Mac OS Tahoe. Was able to get around it by using disk utility.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top