I belong to a camera club; we share pictures, via flashdrives, at every meeting. This week, we discovered that drives generated on updated Apple machines won’t open on my Win7 laptop.Is there a workaround? Will Microsoft pictures open on an Apple machine? We show the pix on a TV (library’s, not ours) through an HDMI Cable. What to do, what to do?
Dan
Is the problem that your computer won’t read the flash drive because the drive is formatted in a way that Windows 7 will not read?
Or, is the problem that you can read the flash drive, but the files are in the HEIC format, and cannot be opened for viewing?
For the first issue, reading the drive, if the drive is formatted with MacOS specific file system, then the Mac user will have to reformat it with exFAT or FAT. It is also possible the drive has been setup with a GPT partition table, which may give Windows 7 problems. To fix that, the drive will have to be repartitioned with an MBR partition table, that Windows 7 can read, and then formatted to FAT or exFAT.
If it is the second issue, HEIC files, then search for programs and plugins to allow reading HEIC on Windows 7. Those exist, but I can’t recommend any one in particular. If you want to make this someone else’s problem, then the files can be converted to JPG on the Mac before they are copied to the USB drive.
The root of both problems is that Windows 7 is ancient, and is having trouble handling modern standards. Red Queen dilemma: you have to constantly be moving forward just to stay in place.
Folks tend to keep stacking the folders holding their monthly photos onto their hard drive. At the club meeting, I tried a couple of drives out, and it was no-go with the current pictures. However, going back to Oct-Nov, the old files opened just fine. So, my assumption is that Apple did an automatic update, of some sort, that sabotaged the files. The pix are all JPGs.
I’ll have to borrow one of those drives and try to follow the trail; dopey me, didn’t think to hang on to one for diagnostics.Thanks for your reply, I’ll see what I can squeeze out of the net.
Dan
One thing you should try is right click on a file that works and open Properties, then do the same with a file that doesn’t work. See if you can see a difference in the file properties, and see if that difference is consistently associated with working/nonworking files.
Good suggestion, thank you.
Dan