transferring files from PC to Mac

[cbacon]

So my dad bought one of those new iMacs and when he went to transfer his music from his external hard drive the new mac said it wasn't recognized. Apparently needs to be reformatted. Tried it on the old PC and it won't recognize on there either now. Any way to salvage the files somehow? If so how do i reformat the damn thing without wiping everything off so he can transfer it to the mac?

[dubq]

I've used USB flash drives, burned cds/dvds and a patch-cable pc-to-mac hookup to transfer files between mine. I've never tried an external HDD before but I'm surprised it doesn't work similar to the flash drive. What's it formatted as?

[AndrewTS]

FAT32 format is what you need.

 

FAT12 and FAT16 (typically what you get by default on most usb flash drives I believe) also work, which is why dubq's flash drives worked, but for a hard drive go with FAT32. Mac OS X and Windows can both recognize FAT.

 

Any way to salvage the files somehow? If so how do i reformat the damn thing without wiping everything off so he can transfer it to the mac?

 

Reformatting requires erase. As long as you have the original computer accessible just put everything back on.