Windows 10: Switching from MacOS over to a Windows Machine/External HD format?

Hello. I currently have a 5k imac from 2014. So its getting a bit old. I am looking to make the switch to a windows machine. Another 5k imac with the specs i want is a bit out of my budget. There is only one problem. I currently have 4 external HD's with around 10tb of data. All 3 of these hard drives are formatted with APFS. Which i know windows wont read or write natively. I am trying to think of a solution. Trying to move the data off each hard drive, formatting to NTFS, then transferring back on seems like a crazy amount of work and would require a purchase of a new big hard drive. I see that there is this program. https://www.paragon-software.com/us/home/apfs-windows/ Which allows windows to read a write to apfs. But writing is currently in beta. Is this a good option? Any other ideas? Any help is greatly appreciated. Almost bought a new computer last night. But didnt, since this is holding me back. Thanks a lot.

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:)

 

Cannot Format HD


Need to initialize it as GPT disk type with HD > 2TB:
From Admin command prompt:

1. diskpart
2. list disk =====> Take a note of disk # for the 4TB HD
3. select disk # ====> From step 2
4. clean
5. exit

Open Disk Management and initialize the disk as GPT, create simple then format.

 

Formatting an external HD

I just want to verify formatting an external HD using Win10 will give me access to the HD. I did it with WinXP and couldn't access it, it didn't even show up using windows explorer.

 

Formatting an external HD

You can't have "access" to an external HD unless it's been formatted. If you're referring to the same external device that you had trouble with in XP, you should consider that there could be something wrong with the drive, rather than there being a problem
with formatting per se.