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TICKET ARCHIVE -> Dead iBook-need to copy files to new Mac

mmace - Dec 18, 2006 - 5:33 am

Hi guys, 1st post, please go easy on me!

1st off, I'm a windows users and I'm trying to help my wife so please forgive me if I don't understand everything!

My wifes iBook G4 died last night (it was a long, slow death!), so I have just ordered her a MacBook.
I've opened up her iBook and got the HDD out and I have a USB enclosure for it (there was nothing wrong with the HDD, just the display, logic board and battery). I could only just afford the macbook so can't really afford anything else (someone's suggesting a firewire enclosure for the HDD but I reall cannot afford ANYTHING at the moment).

I am wanting to know if it's possible to recue some things from the HDD, and if so, where on the HDD will they be?

I'm hoping to save:
Emails
Address Book
Photos (and if possible the folders they were in within iPhoto)
her music (again, if possible her playlists)
Her calendar (lots of important dates in there!)

hope you guys can help, and thank you in advance for any help or suggestions

icampbell - Dec 18, 2006 - 7:50 am

Good Morning,

Assuming that the drive is OK and you have the proper case for it, the files that you want should all be located in the User directory.

The User Directory is located at

HD/Users/Home Directory (whatever it was called based on the Short Name)/.....

The Emails could be stored in one of 2 places based on the program.
If she was using Apple Mail, it will be stored in:

HD/Users/HomeDir/Library/Mail (take the whole folder)

or if using Microsoft Entourage, then it wil be

HD/Users/HomeDir/Documents/Microsoft User Data (take the whole folder)

For Address Book, it will be located at:

HD/Users/HomeDir/Library/Application Support/AddressBook

For Photos, take the contents of the picture folder at:

HD/Users/HomeDir/Photos

For Music, take the contents of he music folder at:

HD/Users/HomeDir/Music

And for iCal, the files are located at:

HD/Users/HomeDir/Library/Application Support/iCal

Before or After all the above, you have a further option. When you get you new Macbook, when you start it up it will ask you if you want to transfer data from your old system. If you plug in the USB 2.0 drive it may very well be recognized (I've had it work a couple of times based on the USB bridge board in the case) and it will copy all your existing data to the new Macbook making it ready for use.

If not then you can just copy the data from the external into the same places on the new system and life should be good again.

Hope this gets you back up and running.

Cheers,

Ian Campbell

mmace - Dec 18, 2006 - 7:54 am

thank you very much, that is exactly what I was wanting to do. you've saved me a lot of work trying to find things.

Thank you for a very quick response!