How do i look at an old windows hardrive on a macbook air

halp_me_pls wrote:

I have important files on an old windows hardrive and really need to just look at it at least. So douse any one know how to look at or transfer files from a old windows hardrive to a macbook air?

If this is an external drive, connect it to your Mac's usb port and navigate to/open the drive. Copy the files you want to copy.

halp_me_pls wrote:

one last question would it work if it is not a removable drive?

No. The drive needs to be physically accessible to the Mac and the only way would be to connect the drive using a USB adapter, dock, or enclosure.

If the Windows system boots & functions just fine, then you could enable file sharing so you could access files between the two systems. I don't know how to enable File Sharing on Windows.

If the Windows computer is functional, but just won't boot into Windows, then another option would be to boot to a Linux USB drive to attempt to access the data on the Windows drive. As long as the Windows drive is not encrypted, then this should work. The easiest method to do this would be to create & use a bootable Knoppix USB stick....Knoppix can boot even if Secure Boot is enabled (you need to select the bottom most entry in the list of possible bootloaders when prompted....I don't recall the name/designation).

Of course everything in this thread assumes the Windows drive is healthy and not encrypted. It is technically possible to access a Windows drive from macOS or Linux if BitLocker software encryption was used, but it does complicate matters.

halp_me_pls wrote:

would that work an an internal drive to?

Depends if it is a removable drive and you have a usb enclosure to put it in.