new to windows, switched from a mac

[MikeyAllam]

Hello everyone, i am new user to windows after having been with a macbook for several years. i am still trying to get used to this pc. my first question is about accessing an extrernal hard drive. upon plugging in a 1TB hard drive that has a lot of files and backups from my old macbook, my pc didnt let me access the drive. a lot of videos off the internet started to confuse me by telling me to make some changes through disk manager to either shrink volume from my hard drive or change the letter assigned. 

since this is all new to me, i'm not quite sure of what to do and dont want to do anything yet.

now when plugging in my hard drive it asks me to format it in order to use it. is there a way of accessing all my old data from it without having to format.

my other question is about transferring files from my old macbook. how can i open some apps that i transferred or files, as most of them when opened on my PC are now just folders with many files that are blank. 

[banhien · Accepted solution]

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@MikeyAllam wrote:

... now when plugging in my hard drive it asks me to format it in order to use it. is there a way of accessing all my old data from it without having to format...

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@MikeyAllam 

Mac file system and Windows file system are not the same specially on portable HDD's. Please use the following way

             https://www.techadvisor.co.uk/how-to/windows/read-mac-drive-windows-free-3369574/

Regards.