Moving data from a crashed PC to iMac

[TomFromAndroid]

This may be a dumb question, and it may be in the wrong place so please bear with me.

I’ve been thinking about buying an iMac to replace my Dell Inspiron AIO, and I understand Migration Assistant and the other methods of moving data from a working PC to a Mac. Trouble is, the old Dell just died…totally. It won’t power up at all. The power adapter seems to be operating, as the indicator light goes on and I can hear a faint hum, which leads me to believe that the insides of the machine are toast.

Fortunately, I do have recent backups of all important stuff on an external drive using File History. So the question is: How would I restore the data on the external drive to the new iMac? Will the Windows 10 backup appear in Finder, and do I need to copy everything file by file (or folder by folder)? I realize Mac OS won’t restore directly, but I’m wondering what the best and easiest method would be. Aside from just getting another Windows PC. (Groan 😉😨). Thanks in advance.

 

[Sciuriware]

This may be a dumb question, and it may be in the wrong place so please bear with me.

I’ve been thinking about buying an iMac to replace my Dell Inspiron AIO, and I understand Migration Assistant and the other methods of moving data from a working PC to a Mac. Trouble is, the old Dell just died…totally. It won’t power up at all. The power adapter seems to be operating, as the indicator light goes on and I can hear a faint hum, which leads me to believe that the insides of the machine are toast.

Fortunately, I do have recent backups of all important stuff on an external drive using File History. So the question is: How would I restore the data on the external drive to the new iMac? Will the Windows 10 backup appear in Finder, and do I need to copy everything file by file (or folder by folder)? I realize Mac OS won’t restore directly, but I’m wondering what the best and easiest method would be. Aside from just getting another Windows PC. (Groan 😉😨). Thanks in advance.

Go to a repair shop and let them take the disk out; if the cause of the crash was not the disk, they'll find a way.
;JOOP!

 

[gilby101]

How would I restore the data on the external drive to the new iMac?

My understanding (not direct experience) is that you can connect the drive to a Mac. The Mac will be able to read the NTFS format and all your files will be there. Viewable in Finder, but possibly inside zip files. I can imagine it may be tricky to find the most recent version of files. Since macOS can't write (without 3rd party software) to NTFS you can poke around without any risk of messing up the File History disk.

 

[Fishrrman]

OP wrote:
"I’ve been thinking about buying an iMac to replace my Dell Inspiron AIO"

Stop. right. there.
My advice is that if you want a Mac, you consider either the Mini or Mac Studio instead of the iMac.
REASON WHY:
Seems like there have been too many display failures on the 24" iMacs. Not "right out of the box", but... over time.

With a Mini or Studio, you can "bring your own display".
A 27" 4k or 27" 5k will do fine.

In contrast to the iMacs, both the Mini and Studio are highly reliable little boxes -- with as much power as you care to put into them.

 

[!!!]

Migration Assistant and the other methods of moving data from a working PC to a Mac

The only thing it really does special is keep your username and copy files from their respective folders (documents, photos, etc) to your Mac user folder's same folders. Otherwise, you can do just as good of a job copying and pasting from the Windows boot drive or backup drive.

 

[Non-Euclidean]

Old hard drives are easily accessible with simple hardware, after removing them from the old PC.

For more modern ones, a SATA to USB adapter works.
For older ones, an IDE to USB works.

Then the newer PC can read the contents. At this point any common OS knows how to read any windows file formats (FAT/FAT32/NTFS).

 

[Wolf1701]

Non-Euclidean's answer is correct. The first thing you try is usually to extract the data from the old disk. If that doesn't work, you move on to something else. Of course, the disk must be functional and not encrypted.