I have an old Mac running OS 10.7.5 and have about 3000 photos on it that I am hoping to save before recycling this computer. If I plug a newer external hard drive (RockZ) into the usb drive, it does not show up in finder or disk utilities. Is there a different approach or certain drive I will need to save these?
Earlier Mac models
Your Mac has USB 2.0 ports. That's what you will need to use. You can get an external USB drive or just use a flash drive (aka thumb drive). Hard to tell how much space you need for those 3000 pix ... but a 32GB thumb drive should be plenty of space. Just be aware that regardless of whether you use an external drive or a thumb drive, with USB 2.0 it's going to take awhile to copy all those pix.
ps. If you get an external drive, format it as Mac OS Extended Journaled or FAT32. Although the Mac format would be preferable. A thumb drive will be FAT32.
Your Mac has USB 2.0 ports. That's what you will need to use. You can get an external USB drive or just use a flash drive (aka thumb drive). Hard to tell how much space you need for those 3000 pix ... but a 32GB thumb drive should be plenty of space. Just be aware that regardless of whether you use an external drive or a thumb drive, with USB 2.0 it's going to take awhile to copy all those pix.
ps. If you get an external drive, format it as Mac OS Extended Journaled or FAT32. Although the Mac format would be preferable. A thumb drive will be FAT32.
Also, how is the new drive formatted?
Mac OS X 10.7.5 (Lion) long predates APFS – so if you plug an APFS-formatted drive into that old Mac, the Mac is not going to be able to mount the APFS volume. Drives formatted using the Windows filesystem NTFS would be readable, but not writable, unless you had special NTFS drivers installed.
It would help if you identify the exact model Mac and the exact model "RockZ" drive and how you are connecting the drive to your Mac.
27 inch iMac, Late 2009
3.06 GHz Intel Core Duo
4GB 1067 MHz DDR3
running Mac OS X Lion 10.7.5
ROCKZ is irrelevant. I need to purchase an external drive (I think)?
Getting photos off an old Mac - OS 10.7.5
