Transferring data from an external hard drive previously connected to a PC

I have an external hard drive that is loaded with data from it's previous connection to a PC. I would like to transfer that data to my new mac pro.
Is that possible and if so can someone give me a brief description of the steps to take.
Thanks

It depends on the data - but all things are possible. I have data that goes back to Apple II days - and it has moved with me from Apple II to MS DOS to Mac OS 7 to Windows 95/98/2000/XP and then to OS X!
If you are using Word documents, Excel spreadsheets etc. then there will be no problems (other than minor formatting issues alluded to by another forum member). The only catch here is if you have encrypted a spreadsheet in Excel on the PC, the Mac version of Excel will not be able to read it.
Proprietary database structures (such as MS Access) are more difficult to transfer as there is no MS equivalent on the Mac (although FileMaker can import MS Access databases).
If you have Windows Address Book contacts and Outlook/Outlook Express emails, these can all be directly imported.
If you have WMV files (i.e. Windows Media Player), then you will need to download Flip4Mac to access them.

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I transferred data from my external hard drive to my restored Mac Book Pro via migration assistant and now my external hard drive in time capsule has red minus signs. How do I get rid of that without getting rid of any of my data?

I used Migration Assistant to transfer my data from my external hard drive via Time Capsule to my restored Mac Book Pro. When I now go into Time Capsule I there are red minus signs in the corner of all the folders that are contained in my back up. How do I get rid of this and access my previous back-ups?

Select the drive and Finder > Get info and at the bottom "ignore permissions on this volume"
You can copy the files, but the ownership on the files still belongs to the other user account, once your done copying, then perform a #6 Reset Users Permissions and that will set all the ownership to that account.
..Step by Step to fix your Mac
Another method is to copy the entire folder, then change it's permissions.

How do i recover data from an external hard drive that was accidentally deleted? After I verified the drive, a message appeared that said my drive needed to be repaired. When I tried to access the drive again, the 700 Gigs of music is gone!

How do i recover data from an external hard drive that was accidentally deleted? After I verified the drive, a message appeared that said my drive needed to be repaired. When I tried to access the drive again, the 700 Gigs of music is gone!

Stop using the drive immediately, un plug it.
Buy a copy of ProSoft DataRescue 4 and use it to search for deleted files.

How do i retrieve data from my external hard drive?

how do i retrieve data from my external hard drive?

If your hard drive can be detected and shows up as a drive letter in my computer but you can't access your files,then you can recover your data off it with data recovery software easily.This way is the easiest and the most inexpensive way to recover your data.If you bring it to a computer repair shop that is available for data recovery servise,they will cost you $500-1000 or more.Hmm, a lot of money.
I managed to recover data from crashed hard drive with Tenorshare Data Recovery.If needed,you can download it and scan your hard drive for free to preview whether your data can be recovered.It will show you thumbnails for recoverable pictures.

How do I restore data from an external hard drive back to a restored mac?

how do I restore data from an external hard drive back to a restored mac?

Hello, Esmin77.
Thank you for visiting Apple Support Communities.
I see you want to restore your MacBook Pro from an external drive. Here is an article that may help you with this process if you used Time Machine to backup these files.
OS X Yosemite: Recover your entire system
Cheers,
Jason H.

When transferring data from an old hard drive to a new one, is there a way to keep alias files and folders in tact?

My mac and I rely HEAVILY on the use of alias files and folders. The simple version of my question is: When transferring data from an old hard drive to a new one, is there a way to keep alias files and folders in tact? These are not symlinks or symbolic links, they're all alias files and folders.
Is there any software out there that might help me with a solution? Are there any tricks or tips you can give me to try?

Use either Setup Assistant at first start, or Migration Assistant on subsequent occasions and all will be transferred intact. Given your wording I presume you are Unix savvy and will appreciate the problems that duplicate userids would cause, so of you use MA for the migration, make sure the target Mac has no userid equal to that on the source and you will be fine.
SA does not have these issues since it runs before any user account is created, so it can simply copy over everything. But MA runs after the fact and only solves the issue partially by changing the UID in the user directory, leading to permission problems.

HT1408 How do I transfer files from an external hard drive formerly connected to a PC to my new iMac computer?

How do I transfer document and photo files from an external hard drive formerly connected to my old PC into my new iMac computer?

There are several different ways to move data from your old PC to your iMac, including Manually Migrating at > Switch 101: Migrate your Windows files or system to your Mac
If you just want to move file's from your External HD, simply plug it into your iMac and drag your doc's to your Documents Folder and Import your photos into iPhoto.
To Share data cross-platform using an External HD, see > Sharing drives - Macworld

Can't transfer data from one external hard drive to another?

I have just purchased my first Mac book Pro a few weeks ago and i seem to be having alot of trouble transfering data between my to hard drives.
One is a 500gb and the other is a 1tb both with movies and photos on them, i want to tranfer the last data from the 500gb to the 1tb and format the 500gb.
I have tried to drag and drop and copy and paste but nothing seems to work? The movies are in avi format too so not sure if that makes a differance or not but that is another issue i would like to sort. How to change the complete hard drive to mp4 or do i do them one by one?
Any help would be great as i dont want to regret this purchase so early in the piece.
Thanks to all in advance.

Yes.

Can I restore settings, apps and data from an external hard drive to new Macbook Pro?

I recently lost my Macbook Pro to water damage. It was about 3 years old and tuned for comfort. Unfortunately, my most recent backup is at least 3 months old. I purchased a new MacBook Pro and I'm wondering what my options are for migrating my settings, apps and data from the old hard drive to the new MacBook Pro? I have a USB drive bay that I plan to attach to the new MBP to gain access to the old hard drive. Someone suggested Migration Assistant but my research hasn't turned up any information about migrating data from an external drive.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.

THANKS! I guess my research wasn't THAT thorough. I booted with the external drive attached and setup immediately gave me the option to setup using Migration Assistant. It was a little slow via USB (2+ hours) but it was nothing compared to the time it would have taken to do it manually. My new 15" MBP looks exactly like my old 13" MBP. AWESOME!!!
Thanks again!

I cannot transfer data from my external hard drive to my new mac

I had to get a new hard drive put into my macbook pro because it was failing. So, I moved all my data onto an external hard drive so I would not lose anything. But now I cannot get iphoto or imovie back onto my computer. It says I cannot open it because it is a time machine back up. I don't want to have to purchase iPhoto and iMovie again just because I had to replace my hard drive.

Copying the files directly from a Time Machine backup may be possible but I don't recommend it. Your new hard disk is essentially a new computer to Time Machine, and it will have problems understanding where to put the individual files. What you're trying to do is just not the right way to go about it.
To restore from a Time Machine backup, boot Lion Recovery and select "Restore from Time Machine backup".
See Pondini's explanation here: http://pondini.org/TM/14.html

I have just restored data from an external hard drive, but half of my iTunes songs are getting the error "original file cannot be located." Where are these files?

My Windows 7 PC just had to be reformatted, and I have retrieved all of my files from an external hard drive. About half of my iTunes library is working fine, the other half pop up the error statement "original file cannot be located." If they haven't come off my external drive, where are they?

This happens if the file is no longer where iTunes expects to find it. Possible causes are that you or some third party tool has moved, renamed or deleted the file, or that the drive it lives on has had a change of drive letter. It is also possible that iTunes has changed from expecting the files to be in the pre-iTunes 9 layout to post-iTunes 9 layout,or vice-versa, and so is looking in slightly the wrong place.
Select a track with an exclamation mark, use Ctrl-I to get info, then cancel when asked to try to locate the track. Look on the summary tab for the location that iTunes thinks the file should be. Now take a look around your hard drive(s). Hopefully you can locate the track in question. If a section of your library has simply been moved, or a drive letter has changed, it should be possible to reverse the actions.
Alternatively, as long as you can find a location holding the missing files, then you should be able to use my FindTracks script to reconnect them to iTunes .
tt2

Moving data from one external hard drive to another ERROR-36

i got a new hp simplesave external hard drive, and i'm moving all my files from an older external hard drive (can't find brand name). Some of the files are bringing up error 36 which is something along the lines of can't read/write file. which is causing the file transfer to stop on that one file. there are a lot of damaged files so the file transferring is going very slowly. is there a way i can find out which files are bad ahead of time so i can get rid of them AND THEN transfer the files?

Well, since the MacBook with Tiger still has issues with the drive, I think it is some kind of hardware problem related to the external drive. I have numerous USB and FireWire drives connected (probably too many), and I've had no issues with Snow Leopard. Snow Leopard makes my older Intel iMac run better than when it was new.
Make sure you try connecting the drive to a separate power outlet, if it is connected to a power strip. It is also possible the drive's power supply is failing; that can cause the the improper disconnect message to come up, because the drive inside is not getting sufficient power. That is why you need to try the hard drive in a different case, or using the USB adapter, to eliminate possibilities.
Also, I still don't know if this drive is USB or FireWire, but be sure to try it with no other devices connected, in case there is some interference between devices.
One more thing you can try to rule out a problem with your currently installed system. Start up using the Snow Leopard installation disc; insert disc and restart with the C key held down. When you get to Installer's first screen, go up to the menu bar and, under Utilities, select to run Disk Utility.
At this point, you can just leave the iMac alone for a while to see if the drive gets ejected. If it does not, try making a Disk Image of the external drive and saving the image file to the iMac's internal drive. If that works, there may be some issue with your current installation (and you have a backup of the data). If it fails, then I think you have confirmed that the problem is with the external drive, not the iMac or Snow Leopard.

How do I transfer data from one external hard drive to another larger one?

I hope I am posting in the logical area for this topic. I have an external hard drive connected to my eMac. My iTunes library and some backup files reside on this hard drive. I am contemplating purchasing another, larger external hard drive so that I can archive more data--more music and some photos. How do I transfer my data from the first drive to the second one, and is this a risky move? (I have a lot of music!)

Hello,
Take a look at SuperDuper (link). This 'clones' any drive across to another; it should suit your needs just fine.
Firewire drives with an Oxford chipset are recommended for PowerPC Macs (like the eMac and iBook) as you can boot the Mac from one to recover the system if the internal drive suffers any issues.
mrtotes

My newly transferred songs from my external hard drive to my ipod read as "Other" instead of "Audio" files

Okay, i need help bad.
Here's the issue. This is my 2nd iPod classic. My first one, which worked beautifully for several years, died. the drive went bad. A sales associate at the Apple Store said it just crapped out (she didn't use those exact words) and my options were to send it out for a new 80G to replace the bad one at $120, or buy a new one, which yielded only one size and one choice for the classic ipod, the 160G. So i sucked it up and bought the 160G. I wanted the extra storage space anyway.
Came home, hooked it up, and new ipod required a newer version of itunes to mount and manage mp3's. it's not iTunes 10, required for sync with iPhone, but newer than what i currently had at hook up, which was some version of 8 or 9. it's now version 9.2.1, to be exact. After installation was complete, iPod mounted and worked with new version of iTunes just fine. Just recently, I connected my external hard drive to my laptop to transfer music i had backed up from my old classic and iTunes. The transfer seemed to work fine, but now with my pod still connected, the newly transfered audio mp3 files are not in my library. The are stored as "Other" under the iPod Summary tab, NOT AUDIO. so i cannot listen to those 14,000 or so songs and albums i just transfered. This is completely frustrating. Can anyone help?? Thanks. How do i convert these to Audio Mp3 files instead of "other" so i can listen and manage in my library, and so they show in the artists menu?? I have "Manually manage songs" checked in the Summary tab. I think it's storing or acting as an external hard drive. Someone help, i'm really ****** off right now. I spent a lot of time d*cking around transferring songs i can't even listen to or make playlists from now. Thanks a lot!
< Edited By Host >

You maybe right, you transfer your 14k songs to your iPod under disk mode, so it don't appear as Audio.
To load your songs into Ipod Audio section, your must load them via iTunes, either Sync or Manually Manage your library, any other way, it just uses up space in the iPod Harddisk, and wont be on your iPod music menu.
So
1. Import your 14K songs into the iTunes library first. (read the iTunes help if you need instructions)
2. You can either Manually manage selected songs from the library or Sync all.
You can delete the songs in the Other section, by going into diskmode, use Finder and delete the 14K songs.
Good luck!

How to recover data from an external hard drive that has lost half of the data I was storing in it

I am using a Lacie external hard drive to store my photos on. Every once in awhile it disappears from my screen. I have been able to bring it back by unplugging and re-plugging from the computer. Then I had to turn it off and on again. Finally, it lost about half the stored photos, and I couldn't recover them. Does anybody have any suggestions as to what I might do to fix this problem?
I'm using an iMac with iOS 10.6.8
The hard drive has 1 TB capacity

You can try these.
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Transferring data from an external hard drive previously connected to a PC

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