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Resolved Need Help Transferring Data from Macbook to PC Laptop

stephenscaggs

stephenscaggs

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 27, 2015
3
0
Davis City, IA.
In 2010, I bought a Macbook and used it scrupulously and constantly. My Macbook started having problems back in 2013 and I finally had to stop using it when it wouldn't start up (i.e. the Apple logo would appear, and a white screen with the Apple logo, and a little cursor that would just constantly circle around beneath the logo, and wouldn't boot up).

So later in 2013, I got a Toshiba laptop because I needed a laptop and didn't have enough money to repair my laptop or buy a new Macbook.

There was a lot of files on my Macbook that are invaluable to me. How can I go about getting those files from my Macbook and get them to my Toshiba? Is there a place I can send it off to do that? Is there no way to get files from a Macbook to a Toshiba? By files, I'm talking about mostly Microsoft Word and Powerpoint documents and some PDFs.

Any help would be appreciated.
 
Big Ron

Big Ron

macrumors 6502
Dec 7, 2012
413
103
United Kingdom
stephenscaggs said:
In 2010, I bought a Macbook and used it scrupulously and constantly. My Macbook started having problems back in 2013 and I finally had to stop using it when it wouldn't start up (i.e. the Apple logo would appear, and a white screen with the Apple logo, and a little cursor that would just constantly circle around beneath the logo, and wouldn't boot up).

So later in 2013, I got a Toshiba laptop because I needed a laptop and didn't have enough money to repair my laptop or buy a new Macbook.

There was a lot of files on my Macbook that are invaluable to me. How can I go about getting those files from my Macbook and get them to my Toshiba? Is there a place I can send it off to do that? Is there no way to get files from a Macbook to a Toshiba? By files, I'm talking about mostly Microsoft Word and Powerpoint documents and some PDFs.

Any help would be appreciated.
Click to expand...
If your MacBook won't start all is not lost. You can buy inexpensive USB hard drive caddies on eBay for under £10. Just remove your hard drive and place it in the caddy. Try to access it on a friends MacBook, try to remember your administrator password. If you can get at your files, transfer them to iCloud or get a free Dropbox account. Then transfer them back to your PC. If your hard drive is dead, there are professional companies who can recover your data but it's expensive. Good luck.
 
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Samuelsan2001

macrumors 604
Oct 24, 2013
7,729
2,153
stephenscaggs said:
Might be a silly question to ask, but may I access them from a Macbook Pro?
Click to expand...

Not if it won't start up. Also that description of your macbook failure sounds a lot like a dead hard drive in which case a caddy won't work either. In that case you'll have to pay someone to try and recover your data from your HDD.

On the plus side $10 to give it a go is worth it and if it doesn't work at least you'll know that you can fix your macbook with a new HDD (or SSD if you really want it to fly).
 
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Command

Command

macrumors regular
Jan 23, 2015
183
79
USA
The first thing to try is to connect it to another Mac directly and attempt target disk mode. https://support.apple.com/kb/PH10725
Just because it won't start up doesn't mean the drive is completely dead. It would more likely flash a folder with a ? on the screen if that were so.

If this does not work, you can then physically pull the drive - since it's a 2010 model, it's just a typical SATA hard drive. Any USB caddy / connection device (SATA to USB) will work fine. The only thing here is that only a Mac will read it, regardless.

Once you get that far, the rest should be simply copying data to a location you can get to with the PC. Drive, Share, etc.
 
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