Can I get files off of my old hard drive?

So, I've been going through a whole lot of trouble lately with my late 2011 Macbook Pro. A little over a week ago it wouldn't start up, and after attempting the recovery process I learned that I had a corrupted hard drive. The problem was I had a partially written 50000 word novel on there which I hadn't backed up. I'm aware that that was incredibly stupid of me, and I usually always back my work up, but I guess because I'd just purchased this macbook in July I didn't expect to have a problem so soon. Anyway, I took it to the apple store and by hooking it up to genius bar OS instead of my own they were able to get into my hard drive and they let me extract the files I needed, and then proceeded to replace my hard drive which took about four days. I just went back to look at the novel after getting the computer back today, and I realized it somehow only got half of it; maybe it was in two documents or something that I missed, I'm not sure what happened, but it's missing a hundred pages.
So, long story short, I need to get back on my hard drive again. They gave the old one to me, but the last thing I want to do is go through the whole entire process of switching drives again, because I need this computer to work on and it would undoubtedly take forever to do. What I'm asking is, does anyone know if there's another way to retrieve these files? Would the apple store be willing to let me load it onto a different computer so I can still keep my own to work on? I know it's probably a long shot, but I'm about ready to give up and this is my only hope.
I'll be returning there tomorrow afternoon, because apparently on top of all of this they did something to my battery while replacing the hard drive, and now it's coming up as not available and it relies entirely on the power adapter to function. So they've got to fix that too. Just my luck, isn't it?
Thanks.

There are several ways to get data off an old drive, some of which have already been mentioned:
USB drive adapter cable (best choice if you only need to do this rarely, too fragile for frequent use)
External enclosure (choose the 0GB empty case)
Drive dock (I keep one of these around to read old drives that are in the closet, so I no longer need the other accessories. Super handy accessory, much more reliable than the USB adapter cable.)
There are also write-protected forensic drive docks intended to examine and rescue data from drives without altering the contents, but that's probably more than what you need. They're mostly for data recovery shops.

Similar Messages

Getting data off a (very) old hard drive

I'm a personal assistant and have just been handed a closet full of old Apple IIci with instructions to get everything off the drives and then junk them.
I am at a loss. I was just going to grab a box of floppies from one of the local computer stores but after being giggled at a few times when I called to ask if anybody carried them I'm wondering if there's another way to do this. I think he also wants to be able to see what is ON them and doesn't have a floppy drive which puts a bit of a damper on the convenience of that idea.
Any and all suggestions welcome!

First of all, in order to avoid any confusion with the older Apple II series, please confirm that you are referring to the Macintosh IIci.
Are the Macintosh IIci computers fully functional (complete with monitors)? Could you perhaps give us some details about the operating system(s) used? Information about file types, programs et cetera could be useful, too.
One can use standard 1.44 MB HD diskettes with the IIci. It is also possible to carry out transfers via one of the serial ports. If at least one of the IIci machines has an Ethernet card installed, a connection to an Ethernet-based network could be another option.
Do you have access to a semi-old Mac, a modern Mac, or possibly only a PC? One could per se connect an external USB floppy drive to a modern computer, but there may be other limitations that will have to be taken into account.
Jan

I have a G4 Quicksilver that no longer works, but the hd may still be good. How can I get files off the G4 hd and onto my new iMac?

I have a G4 Quicksilver 2001 that no longer works, but the hd may still be good. How can I get files off the G4 hd and onto my new late 2013 iMac?

Also, how do I boot the G4 into FireWire Target Disk mode?
First, the G4 must be able to start to use FWTDM. If it can start, hold the t key at boot until you get a "screensaver pattern" that looks like this:
If the G4 is attached via a FireWire cable to a newer Mac with a FireWire port, the G4's hard drive will appear on the other Mac's desktop just as if it were any external drive. A USB cable won't work for FWTDM.
Just wondering if the drive in my G4, which I believe may be an ATA drive will also work in an enclosure for a SATA drive?
No. ATA (actually "PATA" or "IDE") and SATA are different interfaces. PATA external enclosures are now very hard to find. You best and least expensive option is the adaptor that BDAqua linked. One of its connectors is for PATA drives.

Is there a way to access my iTunes Library, which is stored on a (PC) External Hard Drive, on a MacBook Air (through an Apricorn Universal Hard Drive Adapter), without transferring the music files off of the external hard drive?

Is there a way to access my iTunes Library, which is stored on a (PC) External Hard Drive, on a MacBook Air (through an Apricorn Universal Hard Drive Adapter), without transferring the music files off of the external hard drive?
In other words, because the MacBook Air only has 120 gbs of hard drive space & my old hard drive, from a Lenovo, has 500 gbs of hard drive space (and I have over 120 gbs of music), I’m looking to manage my iTunes music from the external hard drive permanently. Upon attempting to access the iTunes library held on the external hard drive the following message comes up: “The iTunes Library.itl file is locked, on a locked disk, or you do not have write permission for this file”. Is there a way to get around this?
Any advice would be greatly appreciated, thanks so much!

You will have to engage a split library which means you will have to start answering questions on this forum because you will need to learn a lot about how iTunes works in order not that have a big mess at the end of it all. It also won't be easy when the time comes to relocate it all to different drives.
You can go to advanced preferences and turn off organize media and copy to items to media folder when adding items to library. Next read about how to selectively consolidate items to the external drive.
Sept. 2010, Consolidate selected content - https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2589812 and April 2014, https://discussions.apple.com/message/25414357
"...selected the new tracks directly in iTunes, Control-clicked on the selection, and saw that now you can consolidate selected items." - http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20090919000326840
Remember that when you start iTunes without the external drive turned on iTunes will present you with a bunch of broken links. If you have automatic downloads enabled with iCloud you may have to turn that off to prevent iTunes from repopulating your drive trying to deal with those "missing" tracks.
If you add tracks in bunches to iTunes and want them to go to different media folders you will need to either add them by holding down the option key while dragging if the desired media folder is not the one set in preferences, or by changing the media folder in preferences. Changing media folder preferences only applies to new files added, not old ones.
Okay, I am going to stop typing because you might just reply to me, "Oh, okay, forget it," and I don't need the exercise.
What are the iTunes library files? - http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1660
More on iTunes library files and what they do - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITunes#Media_management
What are all those iTunes files? - http://www.macworld.com/article/139974/2009/04/itunes_files.html
Where are my iTunes files located? - http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1391

How can i recover my data from an old hard drive after replacing it?

How can I recover my data from an old hard drive after replacing it?

Internal or external hard drive? Was the drive still working before you replaced it?

My old computer has broken and I had not backed up my Itunes. I now have the hard drive from my old computer but cannot transfer the music. How can I transfer the music from my old hard drive to the new laptop?

My old computer has broken and I had not backed up my Itunes. I now have the hard drive from my old computer (windows 7) but cannot transfer the music. How can I transfer the music from my old hard drive to the new laptop (windows 8)?

Copy the entire iTunes folder from \Users\<User>\Music on the old drive into your music folder on the new computer.
Or see Recover your iTunes library from your iPod or iOS device.
tt2

I can not get imovie to see my external hard drive it is an HP media smart server

I can not get imovie to see my external hard drive it is an HP media smart server and I need to be able to house all my video on this server but it access in imovie.

amanda0509, I think you need to reformat the disk to something iMovie is able to work with. iMovie won't allow you to copy or move projects/events to a disk that is not formatted as a Mac OS Extended disk. Once you format it however, it won't be usable by a Windows PC. Are you trying to acces the media smart server by your Mac and also by some PC by any chance?

How do I get my Firefox bookmarks off of my old hard drive (now installed on my new computer as the 2nd hard drive) and into my new installation of Firefox on my new computer?

I had a lovely computer, about 8 years old, running Windows XP; the mother board died; the hard drive was fine.
I now have a new computer, running Windows 7, and I have the old hard drive as my 2nd hard drive.
How do I get my old Firefox bookmarks off the old hard drive and into my new Firefox installation?

You can find your current profile using about:support pasted into the location bar then click on "Open Containing folder. That is where you will want to replace your old files into.
Next find your old profile on your old HD, see
:https://support.mozilla.com/questions/886839
With Firefox down replace the profile files you decide to replace.
You might get a better idea of what you are doing or might want from also looking at
* http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_folder
* http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_folder_-_Firefox

Computer died...now how can I retrieve keyword tags from my old hard drive?

I got a new computer and installed Elements 9.0 on it. I am retrieving the pics from my old hard drive just fine but I seem to have lost the majority of my old keyword tags. Any help? Thanks.

If you didn't write the keyword tags to all the photos when your old computer was working, you can't get the tags back by simply retrieving the photos.
You'll need to retrieve the entire catalog directory. When you open that old catalog on your new computer, all your photos will be listed as "missing". Use the Reconnect All Missing Files to connect them by browsing to their current location.
Ken

How can I get files off of a MacBook Pro stuck in sleep mode?

A bit of a backstory: Recently my mid-2008 MacBook Pro stopped working. When I try to boot it up, the screen just stays black and the idle light flashes perpetually. I've reset the NVRAM and SMC, even attached it to an external monitor, but nothing works. After a lot of research, I'm pretty sure it's a problem with the hall effect switch.
But I digress; I don't actually need this computer repaired, as I have a second (newer) MacBook Pro I can use. However, there are some files on the old one that I'd like to retrieve. And yes, I've tried booting into target disk mode, which unfortunately doesn't work for reasons listed above.
Essentially what I'm asking is, is there a way I could transfer the files off the old computer to the new one? I know, I should take it to the Apple store, but that's not really an option right now due to personal reasons. I'd just like to know if anyone could suggest another way.
Thanks a lot in advance.

Remove the drive and connect it to your other Mac with a SATA to USB adapter. Copy whatever files you want off the drive.

Can't get files OFF Mi

Hi,
I have a Creative Zen Micro and after formatting my computer I can't get any stuff
off of the Micro. The firmware version is 2.20.05 ...
Here's a screenshot of everything. I can only put files on the micro
through the MTP but not, for example Organize Music or swap
files between the PC and the Micro. When I click on that, the folder is just empty
as you can see. If I click on the other Micro icon under My Coputer,
the folders Music, My Playlist etc.. are like the ones the computer doesn't recognize as you can
see. ANd also if I just to check, want to update the firmware, it tells me, that
it can't find the player. I think when it said new hardware found witht he
mass storage thing, that I clicked something wrong.
http://img62.imageshack.us/img62/2074/microerror3ol.jpg
I hope that someone can help me.
Greets,
GrPhXx

Hi sdog,
Welcome to the Sony Community!'
May I ask how're you transferring your file to the Mac? Are you using a USB connection or by taking the memory out of the unit?
To answer your question, you can use a Mac computer to store your videos. You can either use the PlayMemories Home software or iMovie to import them.
Here is a step by step guide on how to import your files.
Turn on the camera.
Connect the camera to the computer using the supplied USB cable.
Set the camera to Mass Storage or USB MODE.
NOTE: After the computer recognizes the connection, it will list the camera drive or drives as NO NAME orUNTITLED on the computer desktop.
Click the NO NAME or UNTITLED icon on the computer desktop.
Locate the video files.
For AVCHD video:
For Standard Definition (SD) video:
Click the PRIVATE folder.
Click the AVCHD folder.
Click the BDMV folder.
Click the STREAM folder.
For Mp4 files
Click the MP_ROOT folder.
Click the 101PNV01 folder.
On the keyboard, press and hold the Shift key.
While holding the Shift key, click to select the video clip files you want to transfer.
Release the Shift key.
On the keyboard, press Command Button + C to copy the files.
Open the folder or directory on the computer where you want to copy the video.
On the keyboard, press Command Button +V to paste the files into the desired location.
If my post answers your question, please mark it as "Accept as Solution"

2 computers at home working with the same files i keep on an external hard drive to free up space the internal drives. I have an airport extreme time capsule to back up both computers. how can i get it to back up the hard drive plugged into time capsual?

I want to run both my macbook pro and imac from a single external hard drive.
i bought a time capsual and set it us as my network and plugged my external hard drive into it. so now both my computers can access it and work on the same image and film files. the time capsual does a lovely job of backing up both my computers and my wifes. but i cant get it to back up the external hard drive that is conected to it. ive looked on the forum and it seems to me that its not possible, which seems odd to me that mac would enable you to plug a hard drive into the time capsual but not let you back it up, what is the point in that!?
so my question is can i back up the external hard drive with time machine, and if not how do i set up my home network so that all my computers can access the same files and time machine will back everything up?
I did the upgrade to maverics on my imac which has caused me a major headache as now all my apature albums have been updated to 3.5.1 but my macbook pro can no longer open them because im unable to upgade it to maverics, but thats another story.
If anyone can help me with my time machine issue i would be very greatful.
many thanks

i cant get it to back up the external hard drive that is conected to it. ive looked on the forum and it seems to me that its not possible, which seems odd to me that mac would enable you to plug a hard drive into the time capsual but not let you back it up, what is the point in that!?
so my question is can i back up the external hard drive with time machine, and if not how do i set up my home network so that all my computers can access the same files and time machine will back everything up?
The TC for whatever it is promoted as,, is still a simple hard disk in a router. It was designed for laptops to use as a backup. A desktop can use a USB drive, faster cheaper and more reliable than a network drive but the laptops need a network wireless storage. Hence the TC. It is NOT nor was it ever designed to do the job you are trying to use it for.. it is not a NAS.. it has no internal backup.
What is more Time Machine has no ability to backup network drives no matter what their format.
So the solution is to either use a real backup software.. eg Carbon Copy Cloner which can do far more than TM can or ever will. It is around $40 so hardly expensive. But since the TC was never designed for it, this will be slow.. and the next question is where are you going to back to. Using the TC as backup location for your files is less than great. Primarily because all your files are still on the same device albeit on different disk. It is also because mixing data and TM backups is not so great. The TC cannot be partitioned although you can alleviate some of the issues..
See this info.
Q3 here http://pondini.org/TM/Time_Capsule.html
Let me go back to the question.
so my question is can i back up the external hard drive with time machine, and if not how do i set up my home network so that all my computers can access the same files and time machine will back everything up?
Fundamentally the TC is the wrong place to do this.
The right place is to plug the USB drive into the iMac.. since it is a desktop machine and you are probably not lugging it around. Simply share the USB drive to the network.
The MBP can then access the USB drive, and it will be around twice the speed of networking to the same drive on the TC. TM on the iMac can then also backup the USB drive to the TC as part of the normal TM backups.
The only thing is the iMac needs to be turned on to allow MBP access.

How to get data off Quadra 650's hard drive

My brother has an old Quadra 650 that has some old design projects on it that he would like to get off. The hard drive won't boot and he is frustrated with the task of trying to figure out why. I am hoping to help him get to his old design files another way.
I have an old Sawtooth G4 450 that has the Classic environment still on it inside OS X 10.2 and can be booted to OS 9. Also have old Adobe software and fonts on the machine, from using the machine for freelance design before getting my Mac Pro. So, what I'm hoping is that I can take the drive from his Quadra 650 (SCSI-based) and connect it to something I have and get the data off of it. With the 650's drive being old and SCSI, I'm not sure what options I have.
Any advice?

There are several difficult ways to transfer the files, once you establish that the drive is alive and the files are there.
AppleTalk-
This requires a Mac with a built-in serial port running 9 or earlier, OR an AppleTalk-over-Ethernet adapter such as AsanteTalk or Farallon EtherMac iPrint LT.
Ethernet-
This requires your Ethernet capable Quarda 650 to have a cheap Transceiver to convert its built-in AAUI-15 Ethernet port to the now-ubiquitous RJ45 twisted-pair Ethernet cable. Luckily, these are readily available on the used market:
eBay search for: (apple,mac) (AAUI,transceiver, RJ45,twisted) -(usb,coax,bnc,RAID,fibre,10base2,thinet,AppleTalk)
Dialup-
If you have a modem connection to the Internet, you could email the files to yourself.
SCSI on another Mac-
Getting a SCSI card, drive enclosure, cable, Terminator, and getting it all to work may be too daunting for a one-off data transfer, but is doable.
Floppy disk-
You would need a USB diskette drive on another Mac. These USB drives are capable of reading 1.4MB Mac-formatted floppies only (not 800K diskettes).
USB thumb drive-
USB support probably requires 8.6, which you may not have and your Mac may or may not run, plus you need a PCI-slot card.
FireWire-
Firewire support probably requires 8.6, which you may not have and your Mac may or may not run, plus you need a PCI-slot card. Your Mac does not support Firewire Target Disk mode.

How can I copy file/folders from and to hard drives? How can I have two or more windows of explorer so that I can drag and drop from one hard drive to another?

Hi,
I am a new customer (purchased last week) of MacBookPro (latest) and its my first ever Apple laptop.
I am almost lost to find the operating tools.
1. How can I copy files from hard drive to computer and vis-a-versa?
2. Only can browse one but how can I have two or more browses at the same time like in MS windows?
3. No right click works on track pad?
4. Is there application/ program compatible to MS office? If so how much and how can I purchase?
5. Is there AutoCAD program that is compatible to MS Window AutoCAD? and if yes how much and how can I purchase?
I will very much appreciate if you could email me the with the solution/answers please.
Regards,
Khagendra Limbu

1) For some reason this happens once in a while with FAT32 enabled external harddrives. I have no idea why this happens but it most easily solved by reformatting the drive. First make sure you've copied everything from the external drive to your internal harddrive. You've done this earlier so I assume you know how to do this.
Now the reformatting part. Open Finder and go to Applications. Look for the folder called "Utilities". Click on it. In it you find a program called "Disk Utility". Click on it. Now look for the external drive. You probably see two entries for the disk. Click on the one that contains the name of the drive NOT the one that describes the disk (Like for example 320.07 GB Samsung S2 Portable Media).
Now you see four tabs in the righthand part of the window. They're called "First Aid", "Erase", "RAID" and "Restore". Click on "Erase". This opens the tab with (amongst others) a dropdownbox (Format) and a textbox (Name) . In the dropdownbox select "Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Take note! This selection disables usage of the drive with Windows PC's. If your goal is to share the drive with Windows PC's select the MS-DOS FAT option.
Enter a label for the drive in the textbox Name. Now click on the button "Erase". This will format the drive.
Now when it's done you can copy back all the items you've copied to your internal harddrive earlier.
2) Opening two windows like Explorer on Windows is opening two Finder windows on the Mac. Simply click on the background. In the menubar you items like 'Finder", "File", "Edit", "View", et cetera. Click on "File" and "New Finder Window". Do this two times. Alternatively you can click on the background and press CMD-N two times.
3) You can right click on the trackpad. This however depends on if you've enabled the feature in System Preferences. In the topmenubar click on the Apple icon and select "System Preferences". Now look for Trackpad in Hardware. Click on it. You see three tabs with the names "Point & Click", "Scroll & Zoom" and "More Gestures". Select "Point & Click" and look for "Secondary Click'. Make sure it is checked and make sure it has written "Click or tap with two fingers" written beneath "Secondary Click". When you're done exit System Preferences. Now select the background and tap with two fingers on the trackpad. This should open the contextuel menu with options like "New Folder", "Get Info" et cetera.

Can't find files after restore onto new hard drive

Hi,
I just installed a larger hard drive. I saved a disk image to an external drive, made a recovery disk, booted off the recovery disk, and restored the saved disk image. Then I took the new unallocated space, formatted it, and created a mounted volume in a folder on the C: drive (My Documents). I moved everything under My Documents to this new mounted volume. In other words: C:\My Documents is now a mounted volume, not actually in the C: partition.
The trouble is, the files are there but in many instances they aren't findable. It seems like there are caches of directory structures in various places that have to be rebuilt, or there are virtual pathnames (e.g. C:\Users\myusername\Documents) that have to be reset. For example, I have a spreadsheet with references to values in other spreadsheets. It can't find these anymore, even though the pathnames ought to be the same.
Does anyone have any suggestions on how to fix this problem?
Thanks very much.
- bill.

I have only played with XP for sure on changing the location of the my documents folder. It usually involves right clicking on it and going to properties and changing it. Sounds like you may need to copy things around, and then, edit the location on the my documents folder. I am not really sure what your situation is.

Can I get files off of my old hard drive?

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