# Move photos from Mac to PC



## tinaccm (Jun 8, 2009)

Hi - My husband has a TON of photos on his Mac, which I need to move to my PC. There are LOTS so I need a way to move folders of them at once. Is there an easy(ish) way to do this? 

My PC is Windows 7. 
His Mac is OS X, 10.6.8. 

I bought a WD Passport to put them on, but am not sure if once I format it for Mac use that I can then move the photos to my PC. Any help appreciated.


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## mannoman (Apr 10, 2007)

I have used a 4gb USB flash drive to move pics from my mac to my PC but you appear to have a huge number of pics. Depending on the number of pics to be moved it might take awhile if you use the flash drive. Nonetheless it's doable - my mac reads the external HD from my PC (FAT32) so there should be no problem going the other way, from mac to PC. In fact, the hard drive is probably a FAT32 so no need to format it for the mac.


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## tinaccm (Jun 8, 2009)

Thanks - When I tried to put things on the WD Passport they didn't go. The manual says you have to format it for mac, but it also says format it for PC to use it as a backup and install software for it, but you don't have to format it for PC if you justwant to use it as an external hard drive. It's not clear if I can just use it as an external hard drive with the Mac. 

I am not a Mac user, so can I copy a file/folder and then paste it in the external hard drive's window like I would for my PC? Or do I need to Duplicate it first and then put it in there? I may be missing something basic on the Mac side as I'm not used to them. 

I don't mind taking the time - I know it will take some time - I am just trying to cut down on my "figuring it out" time! Again, thanks!!


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## sinclair_tm (Mar 11, 2005)

Plug the drive into the Mac, then once it shows up on the Desktop, click once on it, go to the menu bar and click on "File > Get Info". In the window that pops up, look for format and tell us what it says there.


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## tinaccm (Jun 8, 2009)

It says it's 1 TB and the format is NTFS.


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## sinclair_tm (Mar 11, 2005)

Okay, that's the problem, Macs can't write to NTFS drives, hence the drive instructions to format before use on a Mac. You can try letting the Mac format it for both systems. Open Disk Utility found in the Utility folder in the Applications folder. Select the drive in the left pane, then in the right select the Erase tab. There should be a pull down menu for format, select MSDOS, then the Erase button. When it's done, eject the drive and plug it into a Windows PC. If it mounts, you are good to go. If not, you need to find a program to format large drives FAT32.


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