How to Restore Data after Mac Hard Drive Replacement?

Did you have to replace your Mac hard drive with a new one due to low storage space or corruption issues recently? Do you wish to restore data from the affected drive to your new drive? We can help! But, first of all, let's see what makes you replace your Mac hard drive in the first place.

Need for Mac Hard Drive Replacement

• Low storage capacity
• System file corruption
• Mac running extremely slow
• Clicking or grinding noise coming from Mac hard drive
• Mac hard drive's SMART status failure

The next sections describe various methods to restore data after Mac hard drive replacement.

Restore All Your Files to the Revived Mac by Using Time Machine

When you have an up-to-date Time Machine backup of your affected Mac hard drive, use the Time Machine backup drive to restore data to the revived Mac. Steps are as follows:

• Connect your Time Machine backup drive to your Mac.
• Go to Finder > Applications > Utilities > Migration Assistant.
• When prompted, select the Time Machine backup transfer option, then click Continue.
• Choose your Time Machine backup, then click Continue.
• Choose a backup from the list of backups, then click Continue.
• To initiate the transfer process, select the information, then click Continue.
• Once the transfer is over, restart your Mac. Also, check the restored data on your Mac.

Copy Files from the Replaced Hard Drive

When you don't have a Time Machine backup, copy your files from the affected hard drive to the revived Mac. Steps are as follows:

• Insert the affected internal Mac hard drive to an enclosure.
• Connect the hard drive as an external device to your revived Mac using a connector cable.
• Power on your Mac then check whether the external hard drive is accessible.
• If you could access your drive through Desktop or Finder, copy all your files to the Mac.

Note: This method might not work if the hard drive is severely corrupt.

Mount or Repair the Replaced Hard Drive

When the external hard drive is not visible in Desktop or Finder, check the drive in Disk Utility. In case the hard drive is greyed out in Disk Utility, do the following:

• Select the affected hard drive from the sidebar of Disk Utility, then click the Mount tab.
• If the drive doesn't mount, click the First Aid tab, then click Run to repair the drive.
• When the drive is repaired successfully, access your files and save them to your Mac.

Recover Data from the Replaced Mac Hard Drive

When Disk Utility fails to repair the replaced hard drive, recover your data from the drive by using a Mac data recovery software Steps are as follows:

Step 1) Install the *trial version of Stellar Data Recovery Professional for Mac on your revived MacBook or iMac.

Step 2) Connect the replaced hard drive to your Mac. Launch the data recovery software

Step 3) In the Select What To Recover screen, either go with the default selection of Recover Everything or customize your scan by toggling respective switches. Click Next.

Step 4) In the 'Recover From' screen, select the external hard drive, then click Scan. Wait till the scan completes.

Step 5) Preview the scanned items, then select all those that are required and click Recover. Click Browse to specify the save destination, then click Save.

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About The Author

Santosh Kumar Gupta

Data recovery expert on Mac & Windows platforms, with 10-year experience in writing