Help me recover data from an internal hd.

[nbnbxdnb]

I am helping a friend to recover data from an internal hd taken out from a 2011 macbook pro. A new internal hd has been installed to replace the old one(The old one actually worked fine according to him. But somebody in a computer repair shop told him it was going to fail soon). But my friend, who is not savvy in working with computers, didn't backup the system correctly and has never swapped disks before. What I suggested him to do is to put the old internal hd into an external enclosure, boot from the external hd to do a system backup, then finally restore it to the new hd. Will that work as I described? Thanks for any advice.

 

[Taz Mangus]

I am helping a friend to recover data from an internal hd taken out from a 2011 macbook pro. A new internal hd has been installed to replace the old one(The old one actually worked fine according to him. But somebody in a computer repair shop told him it was going to fail soon). But my friend, who is not savvy in working with computers, didn't backup the system correctly and has never swapped disks before. What I suggested him to do is to put the old internal hd into an external enclosure, boot from the external hd to do a system backup, then finally restore it to the new hd. Will that work as I described? Thanks for any advice.

Another option is boot to the external hard drive, format and partition the internal hard drive. Download a program called Carbon Copy Cloner. Use it to clone your external hard drive to the internal hard drive. It will make an exact copy of your external hard drive to the internal hard drive. When it finishes, boot back to the internal hard drive. Once that is all done, start doing backups using Time Machine.

 

[nbnbxdnb]

Another option is boot to the external hard drive, format and partition the internal hard drive. Download a program called Carbon Copy Cloner. Use it to clone your external hard drive to the internal hard drive. It will make an exact copy of your external hard drive to the internal hard drive. When it finishes, boot back to the internal hard drive. Once that is all done, start doing backups using Time Machine.

Thx for the advice. I am considering carbon copy too. But before getting into that stage, do you think installing the old hd (with every file on it intact) into an external enclosure will make it bootable? I installed sys to external hd before. But I never took out an internal hd then booted into it externally.

 

[Taz Mangus]

Thx for the advice. I am considering carbon copy too. But before getting into that stage, do you think installing the old hd (with every file on it intact) into an external enclosure will make it bootable? I installed sys to external hd before. But I never took out an internal hd then booted into it externally.

Yes, you can install the hard drive in an external hard drive enclosure. Plug the external hard drive into a USB port, boot the computer while holding the OPTION-key. Select the external hard drive from the boot select screen. You are now booted to the external hard drive.

 

[nbnbxdnb]

Yes, you can install the hard drive in an external hard drive enclosure. Plug the external hard drive into a USB port, boot the computer while holding the OPTION-key. Select the external hard drive from the boot select screen. You are now booted to the external hard drive.

Thx. Sounds good. I'll help him to complete this.

 

[webs1]

I think you can do this directly in Disk Utility. Put the old drive in a USB enclosure, and boot off of it using the OPTION key at startup. Start disk utility and click on your internal HD partition (underneath the main HD). You'll be given a RESTORE tab in the right hand window. Click restore, and then drag your old HD from the Desktop to the Source field and drag your new HD from the desktop to the Destination field. Click Restore and it will clone your old HD to the new one.

 

[nbnbxdnb]

I think you can do this directly in Disk Utility. Put the old drive in a USB enclosure, and boot off of it using the OPTION key at startup. Start disk utility and click on your internal HD partition (underneath the main HD). You'll be given a RESTORE tab in the right hand window. Click restore, and then drag your old HD from the Desktop to the Source field and drag your new HD from the desktop to the Destination field. Click Restore and it will clone your old HD to the new one.

Thx for the great advice. It sounds easier to do it this way. But there is one thing I don't understand. Will it affect the restoring process, if I have disk utility clone the same system it runs in?

 

[webs1]

I'm not sure I understand what you mean by that.

 

[nbnbxdnb]

I'm not sure I understand what you mean by that.

I just found out myself that, I can't use disk utility to restore the system to the new hd, while I am running on it. So I asked him to boot into recovery mode and use disk utility to restore the old hd to the new one. That may be what you meant. But I failed to understand it initially. Thanks for the great advice.

 

[Weaselboy]

I just found out myself that, I can't use disk utility to restore the system to the new hd, while I am running on it. So I asked him to boot into recovery mode and use disk utility to restore the old hd to the new one. That may be what you meant. But I failed to understand it initially. Thanks for the great advice.

Actually, you can use DU to restore while you are booted to the source drive. Just follow the steps in this video, except yours will be reversed with the source being the external and destination being the internal.

The only catch is the destination drive must be the same size or larger than the source or it won't work. For example, you cannot restore a 500GB drive to a 250GB drive, even if the 500GB drive only has 100GB of data on it. The work around in my example would be to use DU to resize the 500GB volume down to 240GB, then it would work.

 

[nbnbxdnb]

Actually, you can use DU to restore while you are booted to the source drive. Just follow the steps in this video, except yours will be reversed with the source being the external and destination being the internal.

The only catch is the destination drive must be the same size or larger than the source or it won't work. For example, you cannot restore a 500GB drive to a 250GB drive, even if the 500GB drive only has 100GB of data on it. The work around in my example would be to use DU to resize the 500GB volume down to 240GB, then it would work.

Thank you all for help. We have successfully restored the system image to the new hd using DU in recovery mode. Now he is very happy that everything is back in its place as before.
Prior to booting into recovery, I mounted the old hd to the computer using the external hd enclosure and booted from the system on it using "alt". Everything worked fine until I hit the restore button in DU. It said on screen that, the restoration can't be done here and it needs to take place in recovery mode. I don't know if it was due to the system was running on an external hd. But then we did exactly the same thing with DU in recovery mode and it successfully restored the image to the new hd.