Transfer data from PC to Mac

[nat2424]

My post expired but this is the previous message and response for my unresolved problem...

I fortunately backed up all of my data from my old pc onto a WD external hard drive. I now own a mac and am trying to transfer the data onto it. When I plug in the external hd the little icon for it comes up and I can open it, but none of the files make sense to me. This is what they look like...

autorun.inf
Backups.backupdb
Documentation
Install.log
setup.exe
WD_Windows_Tools
WDsync
WDSync.exe

What do I do from here???

earthsaver - Aug 10, 2009 - 10:37 pm
Backups.backupdb is the folder containing Time Machine's backups of your Mac. Normally you wouldn't want to delete this, however since you used this hard disk with your PC, it's probably partitioned as Master Boot Record instead of Apple Partition Map; the latter will function better with your Mac.

Is WDsync a folder? If so, it probably contains the files you backed up to the hard disk using the WDSync utility.

After you restore your data, you'll want to use Disk Utility to repartition the external as APM and then set it up with Time Machine again.

- Ben

This is my new question: So I tried temporarily putting Backups.backupdb in the trash and then clicked on WDSync utility folder and it has one file in it called "autorun.inf". When I click on the file the application VMware Fusion takes me to a windows screen with a windows version of "notepad"....

I have no idea what to do from here...

 

[fryke]

Okay. I'm not sure exactly what you did on the PC to back things up. Did you use a specific tool that's now required to retrieve the backup, maybe? If so, you might be out of luck in that you'll actually need Windows in order to run that specific software.

It would be much easier if you only had copied the actual files. Or do you want to "revive" the PC within VMware? If _that's_ the case, I'd start VMware, let it see the harddrive and install the specific backup tool in order to be able to retrieve the backup.

If the volume is Windows formatted, I wonder what Backups.backupdb is doing on there, since that should only work on Mac formatted volumes. However: Why did you move it to the Trash? Did you let Time Machine make a backup of your Mac to that harddrive as well? If so, moving the Backups.backupdb folder to the Trash may do quite a bit of harm to your Mac backup(s).

 

[djackmac]

I fortunately backed up all of my data from my old pc onto a WD external hard drive. I now own a mac and am trying to transfer the data onto it. When I plug in the external hd the little icon for it comes up and I can open it, but none of the files make sense to me. This is what they look like...

autorun.inf
Backups.backupdb
Documentation
Install.log
setup.exe
WD_Windows_Tools
WDsync
WDSync.exe

What do I do from here???

I see from the Backups.backupdb folder that you have time machine setup and running on that external HD. But I don't see anything that looks like a backup from your Windows machine. Your best bet is to actually make sure you have a backup of your Windows files which I doubt that you have from what you listed. Or put the Windows HD into an external enclosure, then you can connect it to your Mac and get whatever you want.