Mac Book Pro to read from external Windows drive

[oldskool]

I apologize in advance if there are any posts on this but I have searched for a while now, and haven't seen this addressed directly. A friend I work with just received a Mac Book Pro and has an external drive with Windows XP (not sure which version, I have to ask him more details). He wants to be able to copy over files and since I don't know a whole lot about Apple products, could someone tell me if it is even possible to do this for free ?

Concerning his exact specs, I don't know what the external drive is, but will ask more tonight at work. Without more specifics, I know this is a bit ambiguous, but I just wanted to see how hard of an undertaking this could turn out to be, and if there were any basic solutions, such as a built-in capbability for Macs to read Windows partitions, for example.

I wanted to offer him some ideas for free if possible. I Googled and found some paid solutions, such as Paragon NTFS to Mac, but I think what he basically wants could be done without necessarily resorting to that.

I don't believe he is super computer savvy, so it would obviously work to his benefit if he could just have a fairly simple solution. Thanks again, everyone.

~oldskool

 

[S0ULphIRE]

To copy files from an NTFS partition onto a Mac you don't need to do anything (assuming you're running at least 10.5 or later). Just plug it in and it'll let you copy stuff off.
If you want to *write* to the windows drive, you'll need NTFS-3G. It's not free anymore, but there's older versions out (I think v12 and earlier?) that are still completely free, no trial period.

 

[oldskool]

Thanks, Soul. The problem my friend mentioned is that he can't "see" the drive, so I am assuming it needs to be mounted, such as with Linux, for example, since they are both Unix-based. Or is it something else ? He as OS X as the OS on the Pro btw.

 

[S0ULphIRE]

It should automatically mount, if not he can open Disk Utility (located in the Macintosh HD > Applications > Utilities) and see if the drive is even being recognised at all. If it is, he can try mounting it from there.

If it doesn't show up in Disk Utility, or if it fails to mount, there might be issues with the drive/enclosure.

 

[oldskool]

Thank you, again, Soul !