Restoring everything on to a new imac

My old iMac died recently. I have ordered a new one. Can I restore everything I had on my old one.


iMac 21.5″, macOS 10.15

Posted on May 19, 2023 12:12 PM

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3 replies

May 19, 2023 12:30 PM in response to Shakemactom

If you have a back up of the old Mac you can.


If you do not already have a backup, then it becomes only a maybe. It will depend partly on why the old Mac has failed. A drive failure makes restoring your data next to impossible. Most any other failures leave the possibility of removing the old drive and accessing it with your new Mac by way of an external enclosure or drive adapter cable.


Can you provide details?

May 19, 2023 12:54 PM in response to Shakemactom

That's good news. 👍🏽


It sounds like your data was synced in iCloud (or DropBox or other), so as long as you can access it that way, then there should be no problem recovering it when you get your new Mac. Just set it up with your Apple ID and configure it to access your iCloud account and you should be good to go.


I will suggest that once you have it set up, you should start a more robust backup strategy using something like Time Machine with an external drive, or maybe even Carbon Copy Cloner. iCloud is not a true means of backup, it's focus really is on accessibility to the same files across several devices. It seems to be workable for you in this case, though, so you're fortunate.

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Restoring everything on to a new imac

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