The Big Move

As I transition from using a Windows-based computer to a MacBook, my biggest concern has been having access to the tens of thousands of photo files that I have stored on a couple of external drives. I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to access my photos on the Mac.

But as I quickly learned, I was able to read all of the files on one drives, though the other drive, which holds all of my raw-photo files and is password-locked, would not let me open it. Either I've forgotten the password or the MacBook simply isn't recognizing the password (the drive provides a clear hint but wouldn't let me use it).

This drive doesn't allow me an option to claim that I've forgotten the password: either I had to come up with the right password or I would have to re-format the drive, which would destroy more than 65,000 photos. Obviously, that wasn't an option.

Image: Western Digital

When I started making YouTube videos, I needed a place to store all of the raw footage and the project files, and I knew I would need a lot of storage space, so I bought an 8 terabyte drive. At first, I thought it was overkill but now that memory storage has become insanely expensive, I'm glad I bought such a large-capacity drive.

Especially now that I was moving over to Mac.

In addition to not being able to access my raw-file drive on the MacBook, I wasn't able to write to the drive that holds all of my edited photos. I could easily access this drive—it's not password-protected—but I couldn't add any new photos to it: to do so, I had to continue to use my old computer.

The 8 TB drive is formatted such that it'll work on either a Windows or Mac machine (exFAT), so I decided to transfer my raw photo files from the locked device, via my old computer, to the large drive, after which I'd format the locked drive on the Mac and then move those raw files back onto it.

I didn't know how many photos I had on that drive until I started moving them off. As I said, I had more than 65,000 files.

The files were organized into folders for each camera: I had a folder for the Nikon D7200 and another for the D750; I had one for the Sony α6700 (already, it had almost 4,000 photos!). I even had a folder for DW's Canon R7, from the time she and I swapped cameras, and a folder that held files from her old Canon M50.

This raw drive also held some early Insta360 video files, and I wanted to permanently move them to the 8 TB drive, where I hold video projects.

I started by moving the folder with the D750 photos. It took almost three hours to transfer the files so I just let the computer run while I did other things. If I needed to use the computer, I still could, though I noticed it was working slower than usual (it's been growing sluggish for months).

Next, I started moving the folder that contained all of my D7200 photos. I had that camera for more than 11 years so I wasn't surprised that it held nearly 50,000 files, alone. I continued using that camera even though I had my D750: I often used them both when I needed different lenses and didn't want to have to fidget with changing them on a body.

When the transfer started, I was shocked to learn that it would take 17 hours to complete the move on the D7200 folder, alone, which would take me into the next morning. But the move had to be made so I let it run.

It took almost 24 hours to move all of the files from my raw-photo drive to the 8 TB drive, adding about 1.79 TBs to the capacity. I figured that it should have taken less time but again, the computer is showing its age.

It took less than five hours to move the files back from the 8 TB drive, after I reformatted the raw drive, using the MacBook Air for this task. But remember: I decided to leave the Insta360 files with the other video footage on the larger drive.

My workspace during the transfer back.

I found another, older drive that I used to store photos from my Nikon D80 but decided I wouldn't move them over. I'm not planning to write to that drive anymore so as long as I can access the files, that's all that matters.

There's still some life left in the old Windows computer so I'm not about to stop using it. But with all of my photos accessible on the MacBook and with the ability to add more photos from the Mac to the drives, I'll be using the new computer more often. Assuming I get over my frustrations with the Mac machine.

Wouldn't it be nice if the two operating systems were compatible from the get-go?