How to transfer information to new MacBook from a PC backup I made on an external hard drive?

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Level 1

4 points

How to transfer information to new MacBook from a PC backup I made on an external hard drive?

I had a dell pc laptop that started breaking down a couple days ago. Before it died I made a backup of everything on an external hard drive.

I’m trying to use migration assistant now to transfer the backup into my new MacBook, but migration assistant won’t recognize the drive.

If i exit migration assistant, On the Mac desktop I see my hard drive’s name, but when I click into it it just shows all bunch of file named “Backup…” and they are all in zip format.

Is the easiest way to just unzip every single file? There’s a lot and I don’t know which ones are which.

MacBook Air 13″, macOS 15.5

Posted on Aug 5, 2025 12:41 PM

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Answer 1

John Galt

Level 10

153,598 points

Aug 5, 2025 01:23 PM in response to Ninessaint

Migration Assistant is designed to work with:

another Mac,
its Time Machine backup, or
a Windows PC.

That is all.

Transfer from PC to Mac with Migration Assistant - Apple Support

Is the easiest way to just unzip every single file? There’s a lot and I don’t know which ones are which.

I believe so. To import the contents of that external hard disk drive, you can probably copy them one at a time in .zip format. The Mac can uncompress those .zip files, but using Migration Assistant is a nonstarter.

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Answer 2

KiltedTim

Level 10

220,518 points

Aug 5, 2025 02:58 PM in response to Ninessaint

You don't.

You'll have to restore the backup to a working Windows PC. Then you can use Migration assistant to migrate the data from that PC to your Mac.

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