Transfer data from old macbook pro hard drive onto new one

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Transfer data from old macbook pro hard drive onto new one

My macbook pro (2009) stopped working about a week ago. I brought it to tech and he was able to fix it by replacing the fan and the hard drive. He said he was able to move everything from my original hard drive onto the new one he installed on my macbook, but now that I've gotten it back and have started trying to put everything back to the way it was, I've noticed there is a lot missing (applications, downloaded fonts, photoshop brushes/actions/etc.). He gave me the original hard drive from my macbook back to me, so I'm wondering if there's a way to get what's missing off of my original hard drive. I found this Hard Drive Adapter Cable

Will this work for what I need it to do? Will this allow me to transfer my data from my original hard drive onto my new one? I'm not exactly sure what type hard drive it is, I couldn't figure it out from just looking at it. If not, what do I need in order to be able to transfer my stuff onto my new hard drive?

MacBook Pro

Posted on Mar 23, 2021 11:05 AM

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Answer 1

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Limnos

Level 10

419,893 points

Mar 23, 2021 2:15 PM in response to halfaheart

It depends upon the issue with the original drive. If the drive was damaged then the technician was likely unable to clone (100% identical copy) the old drive to the new one. The person may have had to install an operating system on the new drive and then hand-copy files from the old drive. Some things, particularly high-level pro applications such as Photoshop, may store things in hidden places where it is pretty much impossible to copy them, they have to be re-installed.

When I replace a drive with a different one and the old drive is in good condition I will use a cloning tool to clone the old drive to the new one. After cloning, the new drive starts right up like the old one. I would think a tech person would know about that but then knot knowing your tech I can't say for sure. Or, if the old drive was corrupt, it may be it was only possible to do limited rescuing of the old files.

Yes, that adapter should work though I'd be happier if it had an independent power supply rather than relying upon bus power over USB. The question then is, what was wrong with the old drive and will you be able to do any better than the tech?

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Answer 2

halfaheart Author

Level 1

9 points

Mar 23, 2021 3:10 PM in response to Limnos

Thank you so much, all of that information was very helpful! I wish I knew what was wrong with the original hard drive, he never really told me. He didn't really tell me much of anything. I know he was very backed up and it took him about a week to even do what he did, and I'm wondering if he just didn't have the time to finish transferring everything, or if like you said, maybe he only moved what he could. Now that I have a better understanding of what may have happened, I'm going to try to ask the tech all of those questions to see if it's even worth me attempting to get he didn't transfer. Thank you again for this answer!

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Answer 3

Limnos

Level 10

419,893 points

Mar 23, 2021 4:26 PM in response to halfaheart

There's all kinds of ways you could go with this depending upon your interest/determination and us knowing more about the hardware. For example, if it was a relatively small drive you could get that dongle you posted, then try cloning it using trial version of a cloning tool such as SuperDuper or CarbonCopyCloner. You can buy fairly large USB thumb drives for not too much money. For example, I have Mojave OS installed to a 256 GB thumb drive. Now you shouldn't really use thumb drives as serious boot drives (particularly not over USB 2 which I think your model Mac has) but for an experiment to see whether or not you can clone that other drive you could do that and then try to boot from it and see how things look. If you're content you could then clone it to your internal drive. If not then you have an extra thumb drive around.

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Transfer data from old macbook pro hard drive onto new one

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