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Author Topic: Migrating to Mac  (Read 2346 times)

Lex

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Migrating to Mac
« on: January 01, 2014, 12:21:58 am »

I am currently a windows user thinking of migrating to Mac.
My Lightroom catalogue and images reside on an external hard drive which I duplicate onto two other hard drives.
Will the Mac seamlessly read and operate these drives? If not; what is the procedure to get up and running on the Mac given that only the Lightroom software  is resident on my windows machine?

Many Thanks

Lex Franks
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Schewe

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Re: Migrating to Mac
« Reply #1 on: January 01, 2014, 01:56:34 am »

That depends on how your Windows volumes were formatted...

The files and catalog will go from Win/Mac easy...but NTFS formatted drives are (as far as I know) read only when mounted on Mac. FAT formatted drives are read/write on Mac.

The key to consider is getting the data off any NTFS formatted drives then reformatting the drives as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) which you can do after migrating the data off those drives. MacRumors has a guide to this procedure here.

Actually, it's pretty easy as long as you pay close attention and always have backup copies of everything to fall back on if thing go south!
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Tony Jay

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Re: Migrating to Mac
« Reply #2 on: January 01, 2014, 03:51:07 am »

...The files and catalog will go from Win/Mac easy...but NTFS formatted drives are (as far as I know) read only when mounted on Mac. FAT formatted drives are read/write on Mac.

I can confirm that there are utilities for Mac OS that allow both read and write operations for ANY Windows-formatted drive including NTFS.
I recently travelled to Africa with a MacBook Pro and several NTFS-formatted EHDD's with no issues whatsoever.
5000 images downloaded and backed up.
Back in Aus all images downloaded onto my Windows workstation.

So, bottom line OS X can be made to recognise and read/write to NTFS drives.
Funnily enough I could not find a single utility for Windows that could read/write to all current OS X drive formats.

Tony Jay
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Schewe

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Re: Migrating to Mac
« Reply #3 on: January 01, 2014, 04:14:44 am »

So, bottom line OS X can be made to recognise and read/write to NTFS drives.
Funnily enough I could not find a single utility for Windows that could read/write to all current OS X drive formats.

In the past I was able to load and read Mac formatted drives but the name escapes me...(I looked). The big thing to recognize is when you do a change of platforms, you should expect a lot of "churn" (meaning stuff ya gotta do in OS X where you didn't in Win .X and learn the "work-a-rounds").

Tread carefully....
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Manoli

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Re: Migrating to Mac
« Reply #4 on: January 01, 2014, 04:45:37 am »

...but NTFS formatted drives are (as far as I know) read only when mounted on Mac.

NTFS for MacĀ® OS X 11
http://www.paragon-software.com/home/ntfs-mac/

read/write on both mac and windows ..

Funnily enough I could not find a single utility for Windows that could read/write to all current OS X drive formats.

http://www.paragon-software.com/home/hfs-windows/
« Last Edit: January 01, 2014, 04:51:37 am by Manoli »
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Tony Jay

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Re: Migrating to Mac
« Reply #5 on: January 01, 2014, 05:28:51 am »

Even better!
The software I was using was from Tuxera.
So, Paragon's utilities allows full reciprocity!

Tony Jay
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Manoli

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Re: Migrating to Mac
« Reply #6 on: January 01, 2014, 05:48:30 am »

Tony/

Yes - that's correct, but you will need both drivers for full read/write reciprocity. There's a 'package' discount.
I've been using the mac driver ever since I migrated to mac. It's been rock solid, I'd even forgotten about it until I saw your post!

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