Transfer large files from Windows to Mac

WD External Drives WD Portable Drives
1

Hello,

I bought this 1TB Passport specifically to be able to transfer large files from a windows computer to my Mac computer. When I got to the store I became aware that I had to buy either a Windows compatible or Mac. Could not find one for both, so I bought the Passport for Mac. My brother has the windows computer, and I have the Mac. We need to transfer large files (above 4GB) from his computer to mine. I have not been able to find any answers as to how to do this, because it seems that if I re-format the drive to work for both operating systems, that it will not work for file sizes larger than 4 GB. 

Is there any way to transfer these large files from windows machine to Mac without returning this product? I would really hate to return the product because I like it and it was a good price. I’m not even sure if there are other 1 TB hard drives out there that will do what I need it to…

Please help! Thank you. -Chelsea 

2

It depends which way you want to be moving files. There are ways to make a Mac read an NTFS drive (see  here for an example of one way to do it), but it is read-only access. If you’re moving from Windows to Mac then that would work, but not the other way around.

Conversely there are ways to make an HFS drive readable on a PC (see  here for another example of that) which may work if you’re going the other way. 

So depending on which way(s) you want to move data and what your current drive format actually is, then one or the other above could perhaps help?

3

Guessing you have this solved already, but I use “Paragon NTFS for Mac” is a paid software on my mac which allows it to read and write to an NTFS formatted external hard drive.  It has worked well for me.