PC to Mac and an EHD
 

Hi. My EHD failed and I am getting a new one from Backblaze. I am also going to be switching from a PC to a MAC mini. The backblaze folks told me that my new EHD will be set up with files from my PC.

Can I just move the EHD to the MAC? Or do a I need a second one to be formatted to MAC? I am a little confused as to what will open on a mac.

I use the EHD for photos and all my scrapbooking files.

You may need to reformat the EHD so that it can be the right format for Mac read/write and not just read access. When I switched it was 10 years ago and I had to format my EHD for Mac access - but the technology may have changed since then!

Your Backblaze EHD is just a copy of the directory (folders) structure that were on your PC which was a Windows OS. I doubt they could give you the files on a MAC formatted EHD since the backup was done with the Windows OS.

From research I did when trying to share files with a cousin that had a MAC (and couldn't get Dropbox to work on her end), I just couldn't give her an EHD with the files on it. Her MAC wouldn't be able to read them.

I would hesitate to format the EHD until I knew that the files would not be wiped out. That is what formatting an EHD does... erases everything on the EHD (at least in my experience).

You may have to find someone that could do the transfer of the files on the EHD to a different one that is formatted for a MAC.

Thanks! Would you think I would need a second EHD...If I reformat I would loose all the data right?

When I switched from PC to Mac, I purchased new drives and let Best Buy move all my files to the new EHD for my Mac. It was just easier to let them do it since I purchased my Mac from them.

I purchased a new harddrive, formatted it for the Mac, used my PC to transfer everything thing over and then reformatted the old one to use as a backup.

My hard drive works seamlessly from my Mac to a PC now though, but if you reformat the PC hard drive, you'll loose everything on it.