setting up a new external harddrive to transfer photos between old 2009 macbook pro and windows pc

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Level 1

4 points

setting up a new external harddrive to transfer photos between old 2009 macbook pro and windows pc

Hi Apple community!

here’s my overall goal: 1) back up my data with the 3-2-1 backup strategy, and 2) upgrade the hardware on my old Mac.

So, I am upgrading hardware (which I already have, ready to be installed) on my old mid-2009 15-in 2.53GHz MacBook Pro which is currently running El Cap 10.11.6. I want to improve its performance and eek out a few more years from it. However, before I mess with the hardware, I have 17,000+ photos that need to be backed up (yeah yeah I know, better late than never). I have iCloud uploading them in the background so that they get on the cloud, but I also want 1 or 2 copies on a hard drive just in case.

I bought a Silicon Power Armor A60 5TB USB 3.2 portable hard drive to move all of my photos onto so that I can also access them from my much newer Lenovo pc. The portable HD came formatted in NTFS, which I quickly discovered is only readable on Mac. I’ve read all the how-tos and watched at least 25 different YouTube videos to try to troubleshoot, but am still running into issues and my max will not recognize the PHD to write files onto it!

so far I have tried:

1) format disk to exFAT on windows (Mac could not mount it)

2) tried reformatting disk to exFAT on Mac (ran into an error about not enough space)

3) pulled up cmd on windows and added an efi partition (via YouTube instructions, I am NOT fluent in cmd)

4) went back to max and supposedly “successfully” reformatted the disk to exFAT, however the max STILL cannot recognize or mount it!! What am I missing?!?! (Before you ask, yes I have already tried unplugging it, restarting the computer, and plugging the PHD back in. Same results.)

thanks so much for any help!

MacBook Pro 15″, OS X 10.11

Posted on Oct 12, 2023 8:28 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

HWTech

Level 9

60,062 points

Oct 12, 2023 8:02 PM in response to ns_trails

When using Disk Utility to erase a drive, make sure to select the whole physical drive and erase it as GUID partition and exFAT. Within Disk Utility you may need to click "View" and select "Show All Devices" before the physical drives appear on the left pane of Disk Utility.

Make sure to connect the drive directly to the computer. Also try disconnecting all other external devices from the computer in case one of them is causing a problem. If you are connecting the drive directly to the computer, then try connecting it to a powered USB3 hub in case the drive needs more power to operate than is being delivered over USB (or you can try using one of those special USB cables where there are two USB-A connectors where one of the connectors is used to provide extra power to the drive.

I have seen a lot of reports where a drive formatted by Windows as exFAT cannot be read on a Mac because Windows may utilize a file allocation size that macOS does not understand. You do not need any EFI partition on the drive. The EFI partition is only needed for a boot drive since that is where bootloaders for the OS are located....there is no need for an EFI partition on a data only drive.

If this does not work, then can you erase the drive as GUID partition and MacOS Extended (Journaled)? We need to make sure that the drive is able to be erased by Disk Utility and narrow down the source of the problem.

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Answer 2

ns_trails Author

Level 1

4 points

Oct 12, 2023 10:10 AM in response to ns_trails

Or, if I need to update a driver on my mac to be able to recognize/mount the PHD…. How to I do that? I know that apple says it doesn’t need driver updates… but since my OS is so old, perhaps that’s part of the problem? Is there a way to just update a driver and not fully UPGRADE to a whole new OS (which my current hardware won’t support)?

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Answer 3

ns_trails Author

Level 1

4 points

Oct 12, 2023 8:26 PM in response to HWTech

Thank you HWTech! That first option did the trick! Can’t believe that was it… I had been selecting the names drive below the physical one, because that’s what all the tutorials showed! I thought I had also tried the whole thing at one point but I guess not. You solved it! Works beautifully now. Mounted, findable in Finder, and I just copied some photos to it and checked that they were editable from my PC. Woohoo! Thanks so much.

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Answer 4

HWTech

Level 9

60,062 points

Oct 12, 2023 8:50 PM in response to ns_trails

You're welcome. I'm glad it worked. Unfortunately Apple has made things more complicated than they need to be and are trying to hide stuff from users which tends to create new issues like this.

Thanks for the follow up.

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setting up a new external harddrive to transfer photos between old 2009 macbook pro and windows pc

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