I’m liquidating some assets from my business and I need to get everything off an iMac (2014 model) on to a hard drive then onto a Windows 10 machine. The iMac has been backed up regularly on time machine.

any pointers so I don’t neglect anything?

Find something suitable to spend the oodles of spare cash on afterwards

I doubt Windows 10 is going to understand a Time Machine backup, for a start.

You’ll need to format the HDD with a partition that both systems will be able to read. exFAT I think works on both?

What do you mean by “everything”? If it’s just Word/Excel files (or something that’s compatible) there’s nothing to be done, just copy them over…

Yes, as above, are you talking documents, email accounts, internet favourites, etc? I too am pretty sure Time Machine won’t work, it’s mac specific.

mogrim – Member
What do you mean by “everything”? If it’s just Word/Excel files (or something that’s compatible) there’s nothing to be done, just copy them over…

yes not much to say other than, you’ll just need to be vigilant you’re copying everything over (including all your linked files) and make sure you have compatible software in the winodws machine. Easy if you’ve been organised, but of a nightmare if things are a mess! But that’s entirely dependent on what’s there, not something anyone else can answer.

I always get problems with mac files that have been on pc servers and copied back. if they’ve no file extension on the name, you need to add it, as copying to the pc from a mac and then back will disassociate the program it uses. Doubt you’ll have much issue going mc to pc though.

Cougar – Moderator
xFAT I think works on both?

aye exfat or fat32 if individual files are less that 4GB, you can use other file system, but those are your best bet for an external drive.

You’ll be able to connect direct to a pc, and read and write, if you use smb://(IPaddress) (just bypass the external drive part, aslong as they are on the same network.) You’ll want to have a back up plan for you pc though. I’d put important stuff on a server though, not on a computer.

One issue which occurs to me regarding file names. Mac will support “special characters” in file names but Windows will not (things like \ @).

I swapped between macs and pc’s daily and dont have issue with either.

Its not like it was 10 or even 5 years ago when both OS were a little shit but just in different ways, now the are both very good.

Coincidentally I just plugged my time machine back up into the pc today in the hope of getting some files from it and the pc didnt see it as a drive. There may have been a way around this but I just got the files from the mac instead.

It does suggest you may be better just putting your files on a drive rather than relying on a time machine BU to be read by a PC.

OP Cougar’s suggestion is a good one. I have had very few problems with a Mac reading Windows files/drives but plenty more the other way. Mac can format drive FAT32 and write to it. Another way is via Cloud eg Dropbox and/or Google Drive. As far as I know Windows cannot read Time Machine backups (OP and Wilburt)

If you get really fancy if Windows machine and iMac are on the same WiFi I think the Mac can write directly to it.

I read and write between them as network places or some kind of magic.

any pointers so I don’t neglect anything?

If you have anything in Apple’s proprietary software such as email downloaded to Mail, or your precious photos in iPhotos or Photos, you might have some work to do. For example if you’ve simply adopted the Apple way of handling your photos, the actual JPEGs etc are buried fairly deep inside the OS infrastructure (Photos and iPhoto are just databases in effect). You might need to export the pics to regular files that you can copy to your Windows machine or upload them to a cloud service like Google Photos so that the OS becomes irrelevant.