how to format my hard drive on a dell inspiron

These things can often cause Migration Assistant to not establish a connection with the PC. Also, make sure, on the Dell, you have disabled anti-virus live updates, Windows Firewall, Windows Automatic Updates, and any other software firewall sometimes anti-virus programs will have a software firewall. Read over this KB and follow the instructions and you should be good. Migration Assistant comes with Mac OS (Applications -> Utilities). Sometimes IEEE 1394 will work too, but ethernet will probably be easier. Newer Macs will require an ethernet to Thunderbolt adapter (except for the last non-retina MacBook pro build with the optical drive).

You can connect the computers through ethernet or wifi. Here is a really informative article on Migration Assistant: what it does, what it transfers, what it doesn't transfer, where to download it from (to the Dell), how to install (on the Dell) and how to use it, etc: Note that, for the network-based methods, transferring files over wifi will most likely be a few orders of magnitude slower than using the external drive you were planning on using (which is a good plan, but just throwing some other options out there FYI). Instructions for this and many other options for transferring files from PC to Mac can be found here. I suggest checking first because if it's already FAT then you don't have to waste time and effort formatting it, and it will already be good to go.Īnother option to transfer is to skip the external drive entirely and do it over your home network. It should tell you the file system type there. If you want to check the current format of the external drive, attach it to your Windows computer, right click the drive and choose 'Properties'.

Note that if you format the drive you will lose any data that already exists on it. So to guarantee an easy time, format the external drive as FAT first, if it's not already, then copy your data to it, then you'll be 100% fine. If you're using Mavericks I think it can read NTFS natively and you probably won't have any issues. If it is formatted as NTFS you can read it on the Mac but may have to jump through a few hoops, and you will definitely have to take extra steps to be able to write to it from the Mac. If the external drive is formatted as FAT you will have no issues at all.

How to format my hard drive on a dell inspiron