THIS may be the winning solution -- cheap and easy. Thank you, Dr. T.

Haven't gotten to work with Ms B on the project yet today, but I'll bring this up when we talk about it later.

Whether she's aiming to move "PC-drive" pics to her Mac, or Mac pics to the PC-drive, a FAT32 thumb drive may just be the vessel for doing so.

quote:

Originally posted by vthoky:
I believe Ms B has tried plugging the PC-based external drive to her Mac already, but I'll check when I hear from her today.

That should work unless there is some Windows specific software installed on the external drive, but the filesystem will likely be compatible.

quote:

Uploading photos to the cloud might be a good option, but I'm not sure about her connection speed. (We're not all high-speed and fiber here in East Boofoo.)

The uplink speed used to transfer my mother's photos to Amazon Prime Photos was only around 1 Mbs. It took a day, but the photos did eventually get uploaded. (She had the MBP to use, so it didn't matter how long it took.)

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I know she has a lot of pictures, but so far I can't imagine it being more than a collection of more than 32GB. Perhaps I'll grab a 32GB jump drive and drop it off today.

As was mentioned, it will be likely formatted in MSDOS FAT which is likely how your external PC drive is formatted. It can be read and written to by Macs without reformatting. Here is a screen grab that I made to show you how to reformat a drive. Instead, I will use it to show you how many different file formats the latest Mac OS (10.13.2) supports.



APFS is the new Apple filesystem designed for SSDs, Mac OS Extended is the old Mac filesystem designed for rotational drives, with MSDOS (FAT) and ExFAT being for compatibility with Microsoft.

quote:

Originally posted by vthoky:
Another thought: Suppose I grabbed a simple network switch and connected her Samsung and her Mac to that switch. If I then made the PC-format external drive a shared folder, would the Mac be able to read from it over the network? Or do Mac and PC not play well on the same network?

As henryaz pointed out, the latest Mac OS defaults to using SMB as a network filesystem, which is what Windows uses. A cabled switch would work, but you could use also use WiFi for transferring files between Macs and PCs. How to do that is different question if not topic, but for Macs, just go to System Preferences->File Sharing and enable File Sharing. Check on Options and make sure that SMB is being used, not Apple's deprecated AFP.

ETA: I did not see your latest post before I posted.

quote:

Originally posted by vthoky:
Whether she's aiming to move "PC-drive" pics to her Mac, or Mac pics to the PC-drive, a FAT32 thumb drive may just be the vessel for doing so.

If you're going that route, SanDisk Ultra Fit 128GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive is the cheapest, fastest drive which I own and have tested. Sandisk had an earlier version of that drive, which overheated or something and would only work at USB 2.0 speeds. (That was the drive that I used in my screen grab which I named "Old Slow Sandisk".) This Samsung 128GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive is a bit slower but just seems more reliable and durable. (I own the flush fit and keychain versions.) Oddly, the price has increased on the Samsungs since I bought them 1 1/2 years ago.

If you are going to use them for transferring files between Macs and PCs, you might as well format it in exFAT since that filesystem was designed for flash drives.

ETA: If you just want a 32GB drive, I recently purchased this SanDisk Ultra Fit 32GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive for around $10 for use as a Mac OS installer drive after I discovered Apple recovery mode servers were down when I really needed them. It's fast and works.

Hey, rh, you're going to be The Man (that is, the man whom I aggravate to death with questions) when I get hold of this MBP for myself!

I do appreciate your help and the screen grabs.

I didn't get to go take a look at Ms B's machines today, but may get to shortly.

At this point, she's got a handle on file system differences, and is planning to use a Mac-specific hard drive for archiving the files already on her MBP. She'll have two drives in use then, and we've talked some today about consolidating and creating a backup. That'll be another topic for her, but should be easy to manage.

I'll keep ya posted! And thank you again.

I'm a little late to this party, but for $20, you can buy the Paragon NTFS driver software, which will let a Mac read and write to NTFS formatted disks. I've used it for a while without having any problems.

https://www.paragon-software.com/ufsdhome/ntfs-mac/

One catch with copying files is, in modern Mac and PC OSes, NTFS formatted drives become "read only" on a Mac running OS X. If the pics are on a PC formatted drive they should copy fine to a Mac formatted drive.

+1 on the FAT-32 formatted drive.

Once a DVD or CD-R is burned it is universal for any platform.

quote:

As henryaz pointed out, the latest Mac OS defaults to using SMB as a network filesystem, which is what Windows uses. A cabled switch would work, but you could use also use WiFi for transferring files between Macs and PCs. How to do that is different question if not topic, but for Macs, just go to System Preferences->File Sharing and enable File Sharing. Check on Options and make sure that SMB is being used, not Apple's deprecated AFP.

IIRC, OS X hasn’t supported AFP since 10.6 or so without purchasing OSX server.

Thanks again, all. I believe Ms. B is bringing the Macbook over this evening... we'll get some empirical evidence!