Transferring Photos and documents to Seagate External Hard drive from MAC book air

Hello Chetna,

You are correct. By using the ERASE feature from DISK UTILITY app, the data on the external drive will be deleted and the drive will be formatted. I understand that you do not wish to do this since you have data on the external drive that you do not want to lose.

What is happening is that the external drive was formatted for WINDOWS and probably in the NTFS format. You can confirm this by RIGHT CLICKING on the drive name in FINDER and choosing GET INFO. Your MacBook Air is therefore not able to write to it and the drive is probably not mounting and showing up on your desktop either.

Do you plan to use your MacBook Air and the existing Seagate external drive exclusively or do you plan to use that external drive on Mac and Windows? I will assume that you would like to have the external drive remain compatible with both Operating Systems (Windows and macOS).

What needs to happen is that the external drive needs to be formatted in ExFAT or FAT32. This will make the drive compatible with both operating systems. Of course, you cannot just format your external drive without losing your data. Below is what I recommend-

1. Use your Windows computer to transfer all of the data from the Seagate external drive to another drive (internal or another external drive).
2. Use your Windows computer to then format your Seagate drive using either ExFAT or FAT32 format. I prefer the FAT32 format.
3. Copy the data back to the Seagate external drive (now formatted to FAT32) using the same Windows computer.
4. Connect the Seagate drive back to the MacBook Air and the drive should be now mounted and displayed on the desktop.

NOTE- I understand that you may not have another drive to accomplish this OR the internal drive in your Windows computer may not have enough space. If this is the case, then the easiest and economical way to get out of this is to purchase another external drive for use with your MacBook Air and keep the Seagate drive safe for use with a Windows computer.

The other option is to perform a Google Search to find available Tools to convert NTFS formatted drive to FAT32 without losing any data. That search will reveal more options where you may not have to purchase another drive. Look into this as well.

Axel F.

You will need to format your external HDD. To do this open the DISK UTILITY app while the drive is connected to your MacBook Air. Select your drive in DISK UTILITY and then choose ERASE. At this point, you will be given an opportunity to name the drive and also the type of formatting. Choose the APFS type formatting and erase the drive.

Once the above is complete then the drive will be ready and it will be mounted. You should be able to transfer data back and forth after that.

Axel F.

Perfect. Great Job.

Axel F.