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How to recover data from the HD of a dead Mac?

My 2011 21.5 iMac has died and I've bought a replacement but would like to recover the data on the old Mac's HD. I dismantled and removed the WD HD and bought a suitable cable but it won't run outside the computer when plugged in to my new Mac. I've reassembled it and it does start and run and the fan is running but there's nowt on the screen. Can I transfer data via firewire or thunderbolt? I've neither cable at the moment and don't really want to buy one unless I can transfer data.

Best Answered by

Eudora Liu

Answered on Tuesday, August 27, 2024

Here are two ways for you to recover your data from the WD HD of your dead Mac, which you can take as a reference.

Before you take the first action, you need to make sure that your Mac can boot into macOS Recovery Mode. If it is, you can recover your data by using iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac under Recovery Mode.

iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac is a powerful data recovery tool that can help you to recover your data from unbootable Mac and recover kinds of files from HDD, SSD, USB flash drives, and sd cards from WD, Intel, LaCie, etc.

  1. Press the Touch ID or the power button and hold on to Command + Option + R.
  2. Launch Terminal and type in the following command to download and launch iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac. 
    sh <(curl http://bbot.iboysoft.com/boot.sh)
  3. Choose the drive and click Search for Lost Data.
  4. Preview the search results and click Recover.

If your Mac can't boot into macOS Recovery Mode, you need to remove the drive from the dead Mac and use a bare-drive adapter to connect it via USB to the new Mac. After that, you can take the above ways to use iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac.

However, you don't need to boot your Mac into macOS Recovery Mode to download, just click the below button.

 Download

iBoysoft Data Recovery

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