Hoping someone will know

[nswidal]

not aibu but hopefully someone will know, Posting here because I need to buy it tonight.

I have always used windows computers and a samsung phone. I have decided to change to apple, Have ordered macbook and an iphone.

I have about 6 gig of files on my windows desktop computer so was planning on buying an external hdd to transfer them to the mac, Does anyone have experience with doing this? I read that it would need to be reformatted to use on the mac, if so can i then just plug it into my pc, put the files onto the hdd then transfer to the mac? Will any external hdd work or do I need a specific one?

Thanks.

Can't you just upload to some cloud storage? Alternatively you will need to ensure the hard drive is compatible eg if it's a usb memory stick you'll need an adapter for the usb-c on Mac. Also, depending on what software you've bought, some of your files may not transfer normally. You might need to buy Office for Mac.

Use OneDrive (proprietary Microsoft cloud) or Google drive (minimal subscription).
Avoid hard drive and just move into the cloud

Another vote for google drive, even if you have to pay for extra storage. I flick between google drive/photos on my ipad, samsung phone, imac and windows laptop (dont ask!) And it all works fine. If you ever get a plug in hard drive, you can download from either mac or windows to it.

Definitely the cloud would be a better idea. Onedrive, Google Drive or dropbox are all good.