Transfer MP3 Files from PC to Mac problem

Hello.

This seems like an obvious question, but when doing a search I did not find an answer so I am creating a post.

I have about 250GB of MP3 files on my PC. I would like to make them available on my new Mac (first Mac I have owned), so I thought I would buy an external hard drive, copy them to the drive, and then access them from the Mac.

A friend suggested that I would have to buy a PC formatted external drive, because if I bought a Mac formatted drive, my PC would not recognize it.

So, I bought the PC formatted external drive and copied the folder with all of my MP3's to the external drive. I verified that I could open and play the files on my PC from this drive. I even tested it on a second PC laptop, the drive was recognized and I could open and play the MP3's.

I plugged the drive into the Mac and it recognized the drive and opened it. I could see my folder labeled "MP3's." I tried to open the folder, and I got the beach ball for about 3 hours, then I rebooted the Mac and tried again. Same result. My Mac is a 15" MacBook Pro, about 6 months old.

Can anyone help me?

Thank you.