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Moving from PC to Mac

First time poster here.

I just bought my very first Mac and I’ve used the Migration assistant to transfer all the files from my Pc To Mac, so no issues there. Now my question is about how do I get the items from my PC external hard drives to a Mac external hard drive? Being a first time Mac user, not sure if I can just plug in my Seagate and WD to Mac and copy to my new external SSD for Mac. Or can I? Also, any recommendations on a good SSD for Mac, prefer only a 1tb?

Thanks in advance!

MacBook Air

Posted on Jan 20, 2021 11:59 PM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Jan 21, 2021 12:35 AM

Your Mac will read the data on the drives your PC used to use. Windows can't read Macintosh format, but Macs can read what your PC has written. You don't necessarily need a new drive for files.


However, if you have a new drive you could - indeed should - use that for Time Machine backups. See the Apple support document here on drives, and read also the document Back up your files with Time Machine on Mac.


Your question suggests you haven't tried to plug the drives into your Mac to see what would happen?

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Jan 21, 2021 12:35 AM in response to cuervo383

Your Mac will read the data on the drives your PC used to use. Windows can't read Macintosh format, but Macs can read what your PC has written. You don't necessarily need a new drive for files.


However, if you have a new drive you could - indeed should - use that for Time Machine backups. See the Apple support document here on drives, and read also the document Back up your files with Time Machine on Mac.


Your question suggests you haven't tried to plug the drives into your Mac to see what would happen?

Jan 21, 2021 9:22 AM in response to David McKinlay

Thanks again for that! This is helpful and you are correct I have not plugged my Ext HD into the Mac yet. I just wasn't sure what would happen if I did. Just wanted to make sure it wouldn't make the drive unreadable or anything weird like that. So it sounds I can read from it, just not write to it, which I don't need to. I'm definitely on the hunt for a good SSD for my Air.

Jan 21, 2021 3:53 PM in response to cuervo383

Your Mac can write to it too. I recall some years ago a friend at my office who was a PC user had a big external drive he needed to wipe and his PC refused to format it. It was too big for Windows to handle, he said. He gave it to me to format for Windows which I did on my Mac and returned it to him the next day. Welcome to Macintosh.


I've bought a few external drives for my family in the past year or so. The "standard" size is increasing all the time and I've found it difficult to buy a powered drive smaller than 4TB and even the hand-sized USB drives are at least 2TB.


I can't recommend one above another but there are obvious brands which dominate the market. SSD has lots of advantages over the physical/spinning drive so you're on the right track.

Moving from PC to Mac

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