How do I get my iMac to read my external hard drive?

I just got a new iMac for Christmas, my first Mac. I love it so far but I'm having trouble transferring my pc files over. I'm trying to use a Maxtor external hard drive, but my Mac isn't reading it.
Am I doing something wrong or is there a problem somewhere? Any help is greatly appreciated.

If your external drive is formatted in NTFS the iMac may not be able to read it. If that's the case, connect it to your PC and set it up as a network share by enabling file sharing in the iMac and the PC and turning on SMB in the iMac (in the Sharing section of the System Preferences). Then your PC should show up as a shared device in the iMac finder where you can mount it and transfer files.

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