User profile for user: wrench75
wrench75 Author
User level: Level 1
16 points

iMac Died - How to Recover Data?

My wife's iMac completely dies the other day. Was working and all of a sudden just went black. Tried to reboot and absolutely nothing. Unplugged it and when plugged it back in, heard a pop inside! Yikes! My way, it's 8 years old so we figured time for a new one. So my question is, assuming the heard drive itself is intact, how can I simply recover all her personal files off it and so I can copy them onto the new one? Can I pull the hard drive out and put it into some kind of external bay and read it as a USB drive?


Now, I have Time Machine set up on that computer but I have never used it to back up or recover data from. Question is, can I recover data from Timemachine to a new computer, or only onto the original computer the data came from? More curious than anything, because for the last 6 months Timemachine hasn't been working - keep getting an error that it's full yet based on amount of data that was in the iMac, should not have filled up the Timemachine. For some reason, seems like it is not over-writing the older versions of the backup. But I'm going to post something for that under the appropriate heading.


THanks for any help!

Posted on Aug 1, 2016 7:57 AM

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User profile for user: rkaufmann87
rkaufmann87
User level: Level 10
148,534 points

Aug 1, 2016 8:05 AM in response to wrench75

When you get a new Mac, connect the Time Machine backup to the new machine via USB before starting the new machine. The new Mac when turned on will launch Setup Assistant, follow the on-screen commands. When it gets to the point where it is asking if you are migrating from another Mac select yes and follow the on-screen commands to restore the data, applications and even the settings (if you want) from the old machine. Apple explains more in Move your content to a new Mac - Apple Support


This is much easier than pulling the old HD out and putting it in an enclosure. If you do want to do that you can but I don't see the point of going through the trouble.

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User profile for user: wrench75
wrench75 Author
User level: Level 1
16 points

Aug 1, 2016 9:27 AM in response to rkaufmann87

Thanks, that sounds straightforward. Only reason I was talking about pulling out the old hard drive is that the Timemachine backup is not current/up to date. It's about 6 months out of date because of the issue with it being "full". I hadn't got around to fixing that issue and of course, thats when the computer fails! My bad. There isn't a lot of new stuff on it since the last successful backup, but enough to make it worth a moderate amount of effort!


Maybe the best would be to migrate what I can from the old backup and get a new one up a running and when I have time, go into the old hard drive and recover the missing stuff. So, any guidance on using an external drive bay? I have one for my PC but I assume I will need something specific for Mac OS?.

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User profile for user: rkaufmann87
rkaufmann87
User level: Level 10
148,534 points

Aug 1, 2016 9:33 AM in response to wrench75

If you decide to get an external enclosure the only ones I recommend are OWC (www.macsales.com) Mercury Elite Pro series. For this job, I'd recommend using the following one:


https://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/ME3UHKIT0GB/


You can then install a new HD in it and use it as a Time Machine backup (this time never disconnect it) so TM is kept up-to-date. You can also create a Bootable Clone using either SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner. When it comes to backing up, it's not unwise to have redundancy because backups can fail too.


If you decide to pull the old HD and put it in an enclosure you can also migrate from it using the same process I mentioned in my first post.


Finally if you have never disassembled an iMac it can be challenging, if you need a video on how to do it, OWC has them. If you let me know the year and size (20, 21.5, 24 or 27) of the iMac I can point you to the correct video for instructions.

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User profile for user: rkaufmann87
rkaufmann87
User level: Level 10
148,534 points

Aug 1, 2016 12:41 PM in response to mattwithcats

mattwithcats wrote:


This is a lot cheaper...


https://eshop.macsales.com/item/MISC/3.5USB2ENCL/


I Have two of those Mercury enclosures, built like a tank.


But to just pull data off the old drive, a $10 enclosure works.

True, but the advantage of a Mercury Elite Pro is it provides the quality to be repurposed as another TM drive or to create a clone. If the OP doesn't want to do that, then yup get the cheapie model.

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iMac Died - How to Recover Data?

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