SOLVED: transferring data files from windows to mac...

[pax-eterna]

As my new mac mini only has 512gig drive, I have a compact 1Tb SSD USB-C drive to complement it.

I have around 300gig of data files to place in a container on the MacOS drive, as I believe (and please correct me if wrong, MacOS is new to me) it will allow faster access for loading into the parent program - the rest of the data will go to the external, however how can I do this.

The transfer drive I am using is NTFS, so can I simply connect it and then transfer these files to wherever they need to go, or do the data files themselves somehow need to be converted into MacOS as well? IE if transferred as is the parent should still be able to read and write to them, yes?

Was planning on formatting the USB-C drive to MacOS first though.

 

[Grumpus]

If the files in question are text, you could have a problem because text line endings differ between Windows and macOS. Binary files may be ok, since Intel and Apple Silicon are both little-endian. Any reason why you can't just try things out on a few representative files before you commit to transferring everything over?

 

[dmccloud]

As my new mac mini only has 512gig drive, I have a compact 1Tb SSD USB-C drive to complement it.

I have around 300gig of data files to place in a container on the MacOS drive, as I believe (and please correct me if wrong, MacOS is new to me) it will allow faster access for loading into the parent program - the rest of the data will go to the external, however how can I do this.

The transfer drive I am using is NTFS, so can I simply connect it and then transfer these files to wherever they need to go, or do the data files themselves somehow need to be converted into MacOS as well? IE if transferred as is the parent should still be able to read and write to them, yes?

Was planning on formatting the USB-C drive to MacOS first though.

The drive format will affect which machines can read the disk in question, not the actual files themselves. If you do not want to add or purchase any additional software, the drive being used to transfer the files would need to be formatted as either a FAT32 or ExFAT drive, as those are the two disk formats both Windows and MacOS can read without any special drivers or software. While you can use Paragon's "NTFS for Mac" or "HFS for Windows" (both from Paragon) to read those disk formats, those are both paid solutions that would run on top of the host OS.

 

[Grumpus]

The drive format will affect which machines can read the disk in question, not the actual files themselves. If you do not want to add or purchase any additional software, the drive being used to transfer the files would need to be formatted as either a FAT32 or ExFAT drive, as those are the two disk formats both Windows and MacOS can read without any special drivers or software. While you can use Paragon's "NTFS for Mac" or "HFS for Windows" (both from Paragon) to read those disk formats, those are both paid solutions that would run on top of the host OS.

macOS doesn't need 3rd party drivers to read data from NTFS drives, only to write to them. FAT32 has a 4 GB file size limit (so not a good choice for video, virtual machines, etc) and exFAT can be very slow, so NTFS may be the least bad option. Although, that's hard to say, given the lack of details.

 

[pax-eterna]

If the files in question are text, you could have a problem because text line endings differ between Windows and macOS. Binary files may be ok, since Intel and Apple Silicon are both little-endian. Any reason why you can't just try things out on a few representative files before you commit to transferring everything over?

Was hoping for a relatively quick "in-principle" answer was all...no dramas if I didn't As you pointed out all I need is to read them to transfer, not to write to them. Since found out that it should be possible so I'll give a few a try and see how it goes.
Not sure what other details to give you tbh?? Transfer files from NTFS to MacOS....I thought that would be enough....although as you mentioned text files may be an issue that's one to lookout for. The others are mostly app data and project files thereby not needing any conversions according to the relative forums. The rest is mostly audio (mp3 and WAV) and photos.

 

[pax-eterna]

To "tie-off" this thread - got it solved, and very easy too, using a small app called MacDrive 11 for Windows. Just hooked up the APFS USB drive to the W11 machine and simply dragged and dropped from the data folder on W11 to the APFS USB drive. Opened the drive in Sonoma, perfect all the files are there and can be accessed.

One tip, is to ensure you copy them to root directory on the USB drive, if you place them into an existing folder MacOS does not "see" them.

Happy days....now have my Mac mini set up and ready to go