# Switching from Windows PC to an iMac?



## ST-EOS (Feb 13, 2018)

Hello All

I'm considering the purchase of an iMac to use for LR and PS, using my existing Creative Cloud account. But I have a couple of concerns that hopefully someone on here will be able to advise me on.

My current image storage is on multiple HDD some internal (two x 5TB) with a 5TB external drive. The first of the two internal drives contains my master image files, these are backup to the second internal drive. The master drive is also backed up to the external drive.
I also have two SSD drives in the Windows PC, one has the Widows OS on it and all of the applications/programs. The second SSD  contains a back up of the OS and as a scratch disk for PS.

My major concern is to understand the implications to using the current HDD's (both internal and external) on to a new iMac. Obviously the two internal HDD's would need to be in some form of enclosure. 

But will the iMac recognise the ex Windows drives or will I need to create some form of transfer arrangements i.e. formatting one of the existing drives into Apple speak rather than Windows speak and then reloading the images to it. 

How would I be best to arrange this transfer as I would hate to loose my image data. Also assuming that it is possible to make the conversion would my existing catalogue be transferable or would I need to create a new version. 

TIA
Peter


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## Johan Elzenga (Feb 13, 2018)

MacOS can read and write to ExFAT formatted disks, and read (but not write) NTFS disks. You can install a special driver to let a Mac write to NTFS too (Microsoft NTFS for Mac | Paragon Software)

Your Lightroom catalog is multi-platform.


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## tspear (Feb 13, 2018)

JohanElzenga said:


> Your Lightroom catalog is multi-platform.



Mostly. Path problems can be an issue. It helps if you have just a few "master" folders which contains all the images. Much easier to remap...

Tim


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## Johan Elzenga (Feb 13, 2018)

Lightroom catalogs are multi platform, period. Yes, path problems can occur, but they are easy to solve and not specific to switching platforms.


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## clee01l (Feb 13, 2018)

JohanElzenga said:


> Lightroom catalogs are multi platform, period. Yes, path problems can occur, but they are easy to solve and not specific to switching platforms.


There are packaging techniques that will bundle the LR Catalog, previews , presets AND master images that can eliminate path problems moving from one platform to another.  The "Export as a Catalog" will do everything except the existing presets.


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## Johan Elzenga (Feb 14, 2018)

clee01l said:


> There are packaging techniques that will bundle the LR Catalog, previews , presets AND master images that can eliminate path problems moving from one platform to another.  The "Export as a Catalog" will do everything except the existing presets.


Exactly. If you store the images in a folder *inside* the catalog folder, there won't be any path problems.


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## ST-EOS (Feb 15, 2018)

Thanks Johan, Tim and Cletus for all of your of your comments and advice. It seems that it woulldn't be as difficult as I initially thought.


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## clee01l (Feb 15, 2018)

ST-EOS said:


> Thanks Johan, Tim and Cletus for all of your of your comments and advice. It seems that it woulldn't be as difficult as I initially thought.


About 5 years ago, I made this same transition using the technique that I described earlier.  No gotchas.


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## tspear (Feb 15, 2018)

And last year I went the other directions. 
Only issue was the root folder path to my images changed from /volume/data to D:/

Tim


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