How to transfer music files from sonic stage to a hard drive

Question

Hi all
I need your help, I am pulling my hair out here for the past 3 weeks.  I purchased a hard drive from Apple and I want to transfer all my music files from Sonic stage which in on my old Fitjitsu laptop.
I then want to transfer the music from the hard drive to iTunes to my new mac airbook
Any help is appreciated at this present time I am hating Apple product big time.  Maybe it will restore once I am guided at present Apple customer services who sold me the product initially couldn't help me.
Cheers

Answer 1

I am guessing this Fitjutsu laptop is running Windows which uses NTFS format drives.  If you bought a hard drive from Apple it is probably formatted for Mac use. Anyway, I don't know why you are blaming Apple. Hard drives come in one of the other format and you need one that works with both.  Sales people at many kinds of stores rarely know much about things they sell outside of immediate application.  They are trained in the things they sell but are not technically minded.  If you had bought the drive anywhere else you would be like the 2 questions I answered yesterday where people got the music onto the NTFS drive but didn't know why it wouldn't work with the Mac.
You haven't told us much about the Fitjutsu laptop.  You may be able to use Migration Assistant to transfer the entire contents to the Mac.  This will set up a separate user account with the content.
About Windows Migration Assistant - http://support.apple.com/kb/ht4796 - Learn about how to use Windows Migration Assistant to migrate your files from a Windows PC to a Mac.
If you need/want to use a drive to get the music off the other computer you will need a drive with either NTFS format or FAT32 (MS-DOS) format.  With NTFS format the Mac can read but not write to the drive.  You can use it for transferring the files but it will have to be re-formatted back to Mac format for use with the Mac.  Alternatively you can reformat your Mac drive to FAT32 (MS-DOS) format using Disk Utility. Macs can both read and write to this format but is isn't really a a Mac format (Macs can't repair a FAT drive) so eventually you may wish to reformat it too back to Mac format.  Formatting a drive erases all content so once you get the content onto your Mac you will have to store it there temporarily when you format the drive back to Mac format.
I know this is sounding complicated but Apple's answer to transferring PC content is Migration Assistant.  If you don't want to do that then yes, you are entering the realm where there is fiddly hands-on things to do.
If this is a brand new Mac you may still be in the 90 day period where you can get free help at an Apple Store from the "Genius" bar.  I'm guessing, however, this won't extend to their formatting and reformatting a drive and transferring select content.