Hi,
I recently purchased a MacBook Air to replace my broken Windows laptop. The Windows laptop was backed up every Sunday night onto an external hard drive. Is it possible to download the files and folders within the Windows back up file onto my MacBook Air?
It depends. One variable is whether you used the standard Windows 7 Backup and Restore or a 3rd party backup application or another version of Windows. The following applies only to Windows 7 Backup and Restore.
Windows 7 Backup and Restore has the ability to create both a system image backup and a data backup. The system image includes everything on the Windows machine and the data backup includes just user libraries and data files. It has the ability to make both backups as part of a single backup procedure. I know of no way to access the system image backup from a Mac.
You can access the data backup however. If you connect the external drive to your Mac and open Finder and click on the external drive in the left side panel under devices, you should see 2 folders related to the Windows backup. One will be named WindowsImageBackup and I know of no way to access that. The other will named after your old laptop. You can open that folder and inside there will be one or more folders named Backup Set plus a date. You can open those folders and inside will be a folder named Backup Files plus a date which you can also open and that will have a number of .zip files which you can open by double-clicking. Doing this you can drill down to actual data files. You can copy the data files to your Mac; one way is to open a second Finder window (File menu command New Finder Window) and navigate to the location you want to place the files and then drag the files from the external drive Finder window to the Finder window open to your Mac drive.
The above will not be fun and could be very time consuming but if the only copy of the files is located in the Windows Backup on the external drive, it would be a way to get them. The "Manually Migrating" section of Switch Basics: Migrate your Windows files to your Mac has some information on the folder locations where you may want to move the files to. (Note -- as far as I am aware, the Migration Assistant mentioned in the above link will not access the backup.
Thanks, as you say a fairly painful process to move all of the files across but it is at least working.
Following on from this, I also posted this question regarding iTunes ratings and playlists lost when my old laptop died:
Transfer Music Ratings and Playlists from iPhone 5c to Macbook Air iTunes
Will the consolidated iTunes Media Folder which contains the ratings and playlists be found somewhere in the Windows back up file (as I am unzipping the back up file I have seen a number of files under folder paths to my old iTunes location)? If so, do you know the location or filename (it would be the default) that this would be?
Based on iTunes for Windows: Moving your iTunes Media folder
The fine print under the second screen shot from the top states
In Windows 7, the default location is: \username\My Music\iTunes
so it would be \username\My Music\iTunes\iTunes Media
Still having a bit of trouble with this. Which is the filename that contains playlist and rating etc. information? There are multiple files but I am not sure which is the correct one(s)?
Also, once I have the file I am looking for, do I need to save it into the same folder as where the music files are saved?
And once I do have the correct files, how do I get this information displaying in my iTunes? I have tried following the steps in the links you provided but so far no luck (although if I do not have the right data files in the first place this may be why). Regardless, I was expecting some sort of organise or edit download function to do this which was not apparent during my attempts.
That's part of what I meant by "will not be fun." I don't have any more info to help. The only thing I can think of (and I'm stretching here) is to move all of your new iTunes related files aside and start new with iTunes and create a small playlist etc. and then see where those files are located.
I could give some advice about using Windows Backup as the only backup and the pitfalls potential therein -- but you are living that.
How to Download Windows Back Up File to MacBook Air?
