How to copy data to a Mac

[Jerry1]

I bought a new iMac and want to move the data from my old computer to the Mac but I'm running into difficulty.

I have a Win machine with an internal 2TB HDD. I want move an exact copy of that to my Mac which I have a 1TB external drive I'm going to use for data.

I tried making a copy of the win disk using the copy command but I didn't get everything. I tried just using a 2TB external SSD I bought and using the copy function in windows. It didn't copy everything. So I'm starting over.

I'm in the process of cloning the 2TB HDD to my external 2TB SSD. That will give me an exact copy that I can keep for a backup and be the source to load that data into the external 1TB I have for my Mac.

Using the Mac, can I clone the 2TB external drive to the 1TB external drive? The amount of data on the drive is around 600GB (less than 1TB).

The main thing I want, no matter how I move the data, is an exact copy so I don't have to go through the disk and make sure I got everything.

After I do that, I have some questions about using Time Machine, but I'll start a new thread about that. Thank you.

 

[jrgators]

I seem to recall when I moved from a windows machine to a mac there was a migration software that I downloaded on one of the machines and it took care of the copying of things over

 

[Jerry1]

I seem to recall when I moved from a windows machine to a mac there was a migration software that I downloaded on one of the machines and it took care of the copying of things over

I tried that but it wants to migrate the data to the main drive in the iMac. My main drive is only 256GB so it show “not enough space to transfer” and won’t let me go any further. I was hoping for a way to select the external drive I have plugged in.

 

[copyright1997reloaded]

1) You can mount a windows drive on a mac.
sudo mkdir /Volumes/MyNTFS
sudo mount -t ntfs -o rw <Disk Identifier> /Volumes/MyNTFS
from a command line (terminal). To get the partition info, use
diskutil list

2) You can share a drive on a windows system with your mac (i.e. have it act as a server)
https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/connect-to-a-windows-computer-from-a-mac-mchlp1660/mac

3)You could leverage a cloud based solution (This is what I typically do to share files amongst a bunch of PC's and Mac). For example, I use onedrive on both my pc laptop(s) and my Macbook Pro.

 

[MdaPetralia]

I bought a new iMac and want to move the data from my old computer to the Mac but I'm running into difficulty.

I have a Win machine with an internal 2TB HDD. I want move an exact copy of that to my Mac which I have a 1TB external drive I'm going to use for data.

I tried making a copy of the win disk using the copy command but I didn't get everything. I tried just using a 2TB external SSD I bought and using the copy function in windows. It didn't copy everything.

How is the external SSD formatted (e.g. NTFS, exFAT or APFS)?

What exactly "didn't copy"? Certain files (system files, PDF's, MP3's) or specific directories?

And when you say they didn't copy, how do you know? e.g. Are you not seeing the files on the external SSD when connected to your MAC or still connected to your Windows machine? Or CP command failed?

 

[Jerry1]

How is the external SSD formatted (e.g. NTFS, exFAT or APFS)?

What exactly "didn't copy"? Certain files (system files, PDF's, MP3's) or specific directories?

And when you say they didn't copy, how do you know? e.g. Are you not seeing the files on the external SSD when connected to your MAC or still connected to your Windows machine? Or CP command failed?

APFS

A number of folders and their contents.

I know simply because the folders are not on the target disk whether connected to the Mac or to the Win machine.

 

[Jerry1]

1) You can mount a windows drive on a mac.
sudo mkdir /Volumes/MyNTFS
sudo mount -t ntfs -o rw <Disk Identifier> /Volumes/MyNTFS
from a command line (terminal). To get the partition info, use
diskutil list

2) You can share a drive on a windows system with your mac (i.e. have it act as a server)
https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/connect-to-a-windows-computer-from-a-mac-mchlp1660/mac

3)You could leverage a cloud based solution (This is what I typically do to share files amongst a bunch of PC's and Mac). For example, I use onedrive on both my pc laptop(s) and my Macbook Pro.

I don’t want to share the drive because I’m going to get rid of the Win machine. I’d be comfortable using the wifi to access the disk, and I know how to do that, but I still have the problem of how to ensure that I get a good copy of the data.

If I can’t figure out a good solution, I’ll just plug the 2TB SSD into the Mac and move files to the external Mac drive as I need/use files. I’m sure there’s really very little I’ll actually use but this is data I’ve rolled forward from all my computers through the decades.

 

[Jerry1]

Additional clarification. The 1TB SSD is a M.2 drive that I’ve put into an enclosure and formatted it as APFS. The enclosure fits under the base of the Mac and will be essentially a full time second drive on the Mac

This is the enclosure.

https://www.amazon.com/Minisopuru-A...+usb+c&qid=1705891909&sprefix=,aps,183&sr=8-3

 

[MdaPetralia]

A number of folders and their contents.

I know simply because the folders are not on the target disk whether connected to the Mac or to the Win machine.

A couple things to look at/try:

1) Can you select a particular folder that did not copy (in your initial bulk copy) and try to just copy that one folder? What happens?

2) Are these folders/files corrupted on your Windows drive perhaps? I'm sure you opened a file or two to make sure you can open/view, right? You could then run Check Disk or System File Check, Repair.

3) Take a look at the permissions of the folder/files. Do the permissions grant you full control? Are you administrator?

4) Try clearing Windows clipboard history.

 

[Jerry1]

A couple things to look at/try:

1) Can you select a particular folder that did not copy (in your initial bulk copy) and try to just copy that one folder? What happens?

2) Are these folders/files corrupted on your Windows drive perhaps? I'm sure you opened a file or two to make sure you can open/view, right? You could then run Check Disk or System File Check, Repair.

3) Take a look at the permissions of the folder/files. Do the permissions grant you full control? Are you administrator?

4) Try clearing Windows clipboard history.

I can go back and copy the folders/files that I missed, but I'd like to know that I got everything and I don't want to do that through a manual process.

I'm not sure why they didn't copy. They're not corrupted. I've had this problem in the past using the copy function on a big task. Some of the files don't copy because they're old system files or something, but those generate a message. Why some folders did not copy, I have no idea.

I can view and use all of the files on the disk. If there's a permission problem, I'm not aware.


FWIW, I did a clone of the drive and have a perfect match. So, now I have an exact copy of the old HDD on a portable SSD. Now if I could just clone that to a small drive connected to my Mac, I'd be all set. Conceptually it could do it as the data is less than the target drive, but I probably need some software.

 

[target2019]

It's a waste to migrate all to Mac. Most of the files are of no use.

On your Windows system look for your user profile folder. Again, most folders in there are of no use to your Mac.

So copy the folders of interest only.

Is your source drive encrypted? Doesn't sound like it, but asking just in case.

Files not copying can be caused by permissions. If you plug the external SSD into Windows, you can change permissions as needed.

You can also be encountering files that are busy, or a folder not owned by you.

If you copy folder by folder then you'll be able to isolate problems.

As an example, do I need to copy hidden folder AppData? Over 32 GB and more than 315,000 files. Probably NO.

 

[ERD50]

It's a waste to migrate all to Mac. Most of the files are of no use. .....

+1 A clone will have system files, all sorts of Windows stuff of no use on your Mac going forward (or for the most part, even another Win machine).

... I'm in the process of cloning the 2TB HDD to my external 2TB SSD. That will give me an exact copy that I can keep for a backup and be the source to load that data into the external 1TB I have for my Mac.

Using the Mac, can I clone the 2TB external drive to the 1TB external drive? The amount of data on the drive is around 600GB (less than 1TB).

The main thing I want, no matter how I move the data, is an exact copy so I don't have to go through the disk and make sure I got everything. ...

Technically, a real "clone" requires a target disc that is as large/larger than the source disc. However, once you have that clone, there are tools that will let you shrink that clone partition to something just a bit bigger than the data on it, and you can free up the remaining ~ 1.4TB as a separate partition (I'd us GParted for that in the Linux world, and that might be cross platform, or there are other tools available in OSX or WIN). Subsequent clones of that shrunk partition would only require a ~600GB partition. NOTE: clones require their own partition, you can't just copy them like a folder onto the other system.

I can't see why it would be difficult to identify your data versus your system stuff? All you should need is your data, and that should be a pretty straightforward copy.

That said, I seem to recall having some failures using the drag-drop copy method on large amounts of data. I used GRSync instead, and that seemed to be much more robust than the desktop copy process.

https://ostechnix.com/grsync-a-simple-graphical-frontend-for-rsync/

Grsync is a cross-platform application that supports GNU/Linux, macOS and Windows.

-ERD50

 

[mpeirce]

I'm in the process of cloning the 2TB HDD to my external 2TB SSD. That will give me an exact copy that I can keep for a backup and be the source to load that data into the external 1TB I have for my Mac.

Using the Mac, can I clone the 2TB external drive to the 1TB external drive? The amount of data on the drive is around 600GB (less than 1TB).

I'm assuming the external 2TB SSD is formatted using some sort of Windows disk format. With this SSD plugged into a Mac, the Mac can clone the disk, but it can only make an exact duplicate of a Window formatted disk - either to a second 2 TB disk or as a disk image on another 2TB or larger disk. To do this, you use the Disk Utility app, which comes included on macOS.

A disk formatted using APFS (APple File System) can be cloned to a smaller disk by creating a sparse and/or compressed image of that disk. But this only works with Apple formatted disks.

The easiest solution I see for you is to spend another $100 and pick up a cheap 2TB USB 3 disk. Make 2 clones of your original internal disk. Set on aside one as a master archive and attach the second one to your new Mac and access the files on it. Macs have no issue with accessing a Window formatted disk.

 

[Jerry1]

It's a waste to migrate all to Mac. Most of the files are of no use.

I'm beginning to see this as reality. I think I'm just going to take the clone and pull data from it as I need it. It's that time in my life where decluttering is a good thing.

In the past, I always saved all my data to a separate drive and then as I moved to a new machine I copied all that data to a disk in the new machine. However, I've come to realize that's no better than moving (my house) and just keeping everything in the basement and moving it to the next basement - never to be used - at least not the majority of it. Thankfully, now that I'm no longer working, decluttering the data should be easy. Like I said, I'll just pull what I need, when I need it to the new machine. Of course, I can bring a couple files and things like my music over in mass, but that's probably 10 to 20 percent of what's on the disk.

 

[easysurfer]

I'm beginning to see this as reality. I think I'm just going to take the clone and pull data from it as I need it. It's that time in my life where decluttering is a good thing.

In the past, I always saved all my data to a separate drive and then as I moved to a new machine I copied all that data to a disk in the new machine. However, I've come to realize that's no better than moving (my house) and just keeping everything in the basement and moving it to the next basement - never to be used - at least not the majority of it. Thankfully, now that I'm no longer working, decluttering the data should be easy. Like I said, I'll just pull what I need, when I need it to the new machine. Of course, I can bring a couple files and things like my music over in mass, but that's probably 10 to 20 percent of what's on the disk.

This approach seems to make more sense. I was wondering why you were thinking about moving everything from the Win machine over. I like your basement analogy.

For me, on my Win machine I have a data folder that I've created called something like "easysurfer's data". So, if I do a move to new computer someday, that's pretty much an easy copy.

 

[ERD50]

This approach seems to make more sense. I was wondering why you were thinking about moving everything from the Win machine over. I like your basement analogy.

For me, on my Win machine I have a data folder that I've created called something like "easysurfer's data". So, if I do a move to new computer someday, that's pretty much an easy copy.

Yes, this is what is confusing to me as to why OP is making this complicated - aren't all the user data/files under one user folder? Isn't it easy to just copy that one folder, and get all your stuff under it, and skip the system stuff?

That's the way it is on every OS I've worked with, been a while since I tinkered with Windows, but I'm pretty sure that was the same.

But if OP wasn't to clean up and de-clutter along the way, here's what I did a while back to also make sure I didn't miss anything (I had backups spread across a few drives, and I probably had some data on some that wasn't on others):

From a clone of the source - go into one large directory, find what you want, copy it over, then delete what you copied from the clone. When you finish that large directory, add a suffix "-junk" to it. Then at some point, this clone should have nothing of interest. But you can take your time doing it, and you can access the other stuff anytime you need until you are all done.

-ERD50

 

[Jerry1]

Yes, this is what is confusing to me as to why OP is making this complicated - aren't all the user data/files under one user folder? Isn't it easy to just copy that one folder, and get all your stuff under it, and skip the system stuff?


-ERD50

No. Everything is on a separate disk. On my last few machines, I've set it up to have a system drive and a data drive. I load all my programs to the system drive and store my data on the data drive. So, for example, there is a folder for my documents, but there's also a Turbo Tax folder that contains all my returns in separate folders by year.

The reason there are some system folders in there, which I really don't care about, is at some point awhile ago, I was installing some of the junk programs I downloaded onto the data drive. Naturally, some of those files appear as system files and don't copy over. I just tell it to skip that for all occurrences - no big deal.

Therefore, it's really no different from having everything in one folder versus having everything on a separate drive. When I went to copy everything to a new drive, I just highlighted everything and copy/pasted it to the target drive. I have no idea why some things didn't copy. For example, all of my turbo tax folder did not get copied. Three or four folders did not copy over.

No problem, I just cloned the drive and now I have an exact copy. I can discard my old machine at some point in the future and know I have all my files. That was one of the main concerns.

Now, how to move everything to the Mac. Well, as I indicated, I think I'm just going to move what I need when I need it. It will be a lot less and a lean start.

 

[copyright1997reloaded]

I don’t want to share the drive because I’m going to get rid of the Win machine. I’d be comfortable using the wifi to access the disk, and I know how to do that, but I still have the problem of how to ensure that I get a good copy of the data.

If I can’t figure out a good solution, I’ll just plug the 2TB SSD into the Mac and move files to the external Mac drive as I need/use files. I’m sure there’s really very little I’ll actually use but this is data I’ve rolled forward from all my computers through the decades.

One program I use on Windows (enough that I gave them a donation) and that is available on Mac is "FreeFileSync". See: https://freefilesync.org/

You can run it, and then re-run using bitwise comparison to verify all files/folders copied and that the contents are the same.

 

[Route246]

I have been experimenting with these types of enclosures (thunderbolt/USB-C to M.2 NVME connected to Mac Studio and MacBook Pro). One thing I learned was you need DRAM cache with your NVME or the writes will be surprisingly slow with these external NVME hardware. Just be aware of this.

If you search on Amazon you will see "with DRAM cache" and "DRAMless" in the NVME product descriptions. I was going cheap and getting "DRAMless" and it actually ended up being slower than SATA HD spinning disk. Once I switched to NVME with DRAM cache things sped up as expected.

Additional clarification. The 1TB SSD is a M.2 drive that I’ve put into an enclosure and formatted it as APFS. The enclosure fits under the base of the Mac and will be essentially a full time second drive on the Mac

This is the enclosure.

https://www.amazon.com/Minisopuru-A...+usb+c&qid=1705891909&sprefix=,aps,183&sr=8-3

 

[Jerry1]

I have been experimenting with these types of enclosures (thunderbolt/USB-C to M.2 NVME connected to Mac Studio and MacBook Pro). One thing I learned was you need DRAM cache with your NVME or the writes will be surprisingly slow with these external NVME hardware. Just be aware of this.

If you search on Amazon you will see "with DRAM cache" and "DRAMless" in the NVME product descriptions. I was going cheap and getting "DRAMless" and it actually ended up being slower than SATA HD spinning disk. Once I switched to NVME with DRAM cache things sped up as expected.

I guess I should have slowed down on the purchase. The one I bought doesn’t have DRAM cache. Oh well, as you mentioned, it was cheap. If it becomes an issue, I’ll upgrade. I set up Time Machine today so I’ll be able to restore anything I put on it relatively easily.

It may never be an issue given my low end use case. I doubt I’d ever tax the drive on the small files I work with.

ETA:
I just measured the drive speed and, yes, it is very slow. Probably not slow enough that I'll ever notice, but very slowed compared to the on board drive. The drive in the enclosure is reading and writing at around 650MB/s and the system drive runs at around 2500MB/s. Still, if I'm reading this correctly, the enclosure drive will pass data at 650 mega bytes per second - more than 1GB in two seconds. That would be plenty for serving up my little 231kb retirement spreadsheet - one of my larger ( ) working files.

I moved some pictures and videos around and it served them up just fine and the moving process seemed seamless. I think it will be okay but had I known in advance, I would have got a different drive with the DRAM. Oh well. Live and learn.

 

[MdaPetralia]

When I went to copy everything to a new drive, I just highlighted everything and copy/pasted it to the target drive. I have no idea why some things didn't copy. For example, all of my turbo tax folder did not get copied. Three or four folders did not copy over.

I know you mentioned you already created a clone but I'm curious why everything didn't copy over. As it looks like you did copy/paste from Windows Explorer, perhaps opening a CMD prompt as Administrator and using XCOPY command would have copied everything?

 

[Jerry1]

I know you mentioned you already created a clone but I'm curious why everything didn't copy over. As it looks like you did copy/paste from Windows Explorer, perhaps opening a CMD prompt as Administrator and using XCOPY command would have copied everything?

I’m curious too but now that I have what I need and because I’m working on getting the new computer set up the way I want, it’s hard to motivate myself to dig into it. If I’m dorking around and I’m in the computer room, I may try the xcopy. I had forgot about that option.

 

[target2019]

I'm beginning to see this as reality. I think I'm just going to take the clone and pull data from it as I need it. It's that time in my life where decluttering is a good thing.

In the past, I always saved all my data to a separate drive and then as I moved to a new machine I copied all that data to a disk in the new machine. However, I've come to realize that's no better than moving (my house) and just keeping everything in the basement and moving it to the next basement - never to be used - at least not the majority of it. Thankfully, now that I'm no longer working, decluttering the data should be easy. Like I said, I'll just pull what I need, when I need it to the new machine. Of course, I can bring a couple files and things like my music over in mass, but that's probably 10 to 20 percent of what's on the disk.

I have XP on an older Dell, and I boot it up if I need something. Mostly that is photos being managed in an old copy of Picasa. I like your idea more, put the drive in an enclosure and go forward. As long as an old app isn't required, you're good to go.

I have a PowerMac 7500 on the network too. It's pre-OSx, so lots of fun. To copy a file I run a FTP server on my Windows machine. Lol.

Your new environment sounds special. Good luck with that.

 

[sengsational]

If it were me, I'd just mount the windows drive and satisfy myself that I could get to it, then connect the two machines with a KVM switch, pull the plug on the windows machine, and start using the mac. Each time I wanted old stuff, I'd power it up and copy it over. I know you already said you weren't keeping the windows machine, though. And if your Mac has an integrated screen, I guess a KVM isn't going to work.

Here's another option that I use with files, but without certain skills, it too much trouble...you go to a prompt and type "dir /s > mywinfiles.txt" and do the same on your copy on the Mac side using the unix equivalent. The it's just a SMOP to get the differences and decide if anything left behind is of value. And I presume that your copying was done as an administrator.

 

[jim584672]

"INTRODUCTION

The NTFS-3G driver is an open source, freely available read/write NTFS driver for Linux, FreeBSD, macOS, NetBSD, OpenIndiana, QNX and Haiku. It provides safe and fast handling of the Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows 2000, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2016, Windows 10 and Windows Server 2019 NTFS file systems. "

https://github.com/tuxera/ntfs-3g