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Moving catalogue Windows to Mac (1 Viewer)

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Baron Birder

Well-known member
I am currently running Photoshop Elements 14 on Windows 7 and my catalogue is backed up on a 4TB WD my passport external hard drive.

If I were to replace my old laptop with a Mac of some kind would I be able to restore my catalogue retaining the folder structure and the tags onto a Mac? I am particularly concerned that I read that the format of the hard drive may be different between Windows and Mac, something I confess I do not fully understand.
Any guidance appreciated.
BB
 
Thanks Mono
It does mention making sure the file system of tour external hard drive is compatible for Windows and Mac but how do I do that?
BB
 
In File Explorer go to the drive and right click. Go down to Properties and a box will appear. At the top of the General Tab it will tell you which File System the drive is using. If it says FAT or FAT32 or exFAT you will be fine. A common Windows File System is NTFS and Macs can have a problem with this. The latest MacOS should be able to read NTFS but you need an additional program to write to NTFS. It is not an insoluble problem!

Some extra reading
https://www.howtogeek.com/235596/whats-the-difference-between-fat32-exfat-and-ntfs/
https://www.howtogeek.com/236055/how-to-write-to-ntfs-drives-on-a-mac/
 
Last edited:
Mono said:
In File Explorer go to the drive and right click. Go down to Properties and a box will appear. At the top of the General Tab it will tell you which File System the drive is using. If it says FAT or FAT32 or exFAT you will be fine. A common Windows File System is NTFS and Macs can have a problem with this. The latest MacOS should be able to read NTFS but you need an additional program to write to NTFS. It is not an insoluble problem!

Some extra reading
https://www.howtogeek.com/235596/whats-the-difference-between-fat32-exfat-and-ntfs/
https://www.howtogeek.com/236055/how-to-write-to-ntfs-drives-on-a-mac/
Click to expand...
Thanks. It shows NTFS. So presumably that means I will be able to upload my catalogue from the external hard drive but not write a new back up to it without the extra program?
 
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