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I have a damaged MacBook hard drive. I bought a firewire cable so that I can copy files to my new iMac prior to replacing the hard drive on the MacBook. Do I need to drag over all files? It says it will take 9 hours. I'm a bit of a novice about things like this....
Is this a good question?
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the best way to copy all files from one hard drive to another is to use a disk cloning application such as SuperDuper! or Carbon Copy Cloner. Both programs are free and work very well
if you're copying your whole drive and not just your user documents, these programs will ensure that everything is copied including hidden files and important system files. if your intent is to make an exact duplicate bootable drive, then copying files using the Finder will NOT work - the disk will not be an exact bootable copy.
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While you don't "have to" do anything, I assume you want files on the failed drive? Start with the really important stuff first, Photo's, Documents etc.. Then move to less important items,
Time calculation on the finder is pretty tricky, if it gets really long, or stuck, the copy may fail on a I/O error.
If the drive is truly failing, you may want to use the command line to copy files, rather then using the finder, or a data recovery program, the mere act of copying files off of a failing hard drive usually destroys it further.
Keep a Backup always. Keep 2 - One Offsite.
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So if I have created a new folder on my iMac and dragged over all folders from my macbook, including applications, is that the wrong tactic or the correct? The drive is only partly damaged (a -36 error). I probably should have just let the Mac store do it... he said that this was easy but I'm not sure what I'm doing!
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You don't really need to copy over applications, if you want to save your application data, either export data from that app, or copy the library folder. What you want to save are YOUR files, so all your precious and important photos, documents, etc. as matthewfrey says. As he says also, doing it through the finder is not the best option, I suggest you follow more along the bac's idea, cloning your drive with either of the free utilities he suggested. This will be the most complete backup and will ensure a quick and easy recovery for you from this calamity.
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Another note- if you don't have an external HD to clone to, make a partition on your iMac with disk utility, then clone to that partition. Just make sure you clone to the right one. Name it CLONE in big letters so you don't overwrite the wrong drive.
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