Hi all sifus, as the title suggest, I am planning to jump to macOS from windows.

My #1 concern:

What should I do with my current USB flash drives and portable & external hard disks.

As per my understanding, mac needs to install a third party driver to support NTFS file system or format the drive to HFS.

Any tips and suggestions because I have quite a lot of photos and videos in the drives.

convert back to fat32

limitations: a single file cannot be larger than 4gb

Use exFAT formatting.

I have no plans to switch back to FAT32 as I work with a lot of video editing which most of the time the file size exceed the 4GB limit.

The best option is just use 3rd party paid NTFS driver. It's not that expensive. A lot of those media players or TV only support FAT32 & NTFS only, so it's nice to have NTFS even if you only use OSX in the future. Some external/portable HDD include NTFS driver as well, but with restriction. You can use exFAT if you only need to share the drive across multiple pcs & macs. Most devices such as NAS also don't have exFAT support due to the licensing fees (some may have option for you to pay for the exFAT add-on). HFS+ can be support by windows using 3rd party option, but you still need to pay if you need to write on it.

Means I just need to pay for the third party driver and use all my drives normally. ?

i recommending tuxera ntfs, i am using this for more than few years already
good support, free updates and reliable

Link

Yes. Just pay, download & install the 3rd party driver &you can read/write your existing NTFS formatted external storage normally. Don't need to reformat, which is such a hassle as you will have to backup the files before reformat to exFAT or HFS+. Safer choice too, as I've seen someone having corrupted/incomplete backup & only realised it after transferring the file back to the reformatted drive, which make the data recovery impossible.

thank you for the recommendation
I'm a newbie myself and i happened to have this problem (cant paste, only read) issue yesterday and i was wondering why

how come from your screenshot its cheaper and its more expensive when i try to do it

Easy.

All flash drives need to format in exFAT format which Windows will support (all versions except 2000 and XP).

For external hard drives, u can use NTFS in read only. To write, some like Seagate / WD bundled free drivers to enable NTFS Read / Write support on macOS.

Thanks for the suggestion. Appreciate your guidance on the topic.

I believe is due to the currency exchange rate differs from day to day.

paragon NTFS should do the tricks

there are lots of other mac ntfs drivers out there.
i am just recommending based on my experience as i am using it until now. i am not biased or paid by Tuxera

after you run the dmg file, the driver will appear in the list of options under Disk Utility.
select NTFS (Tuxera) and Disk Utility will handle the rest.


This post has been edited by hunt2sp: Oct 19 2016, 11:30 AM