Can you trying copying a folder on the external hard drive to the mac?

As opposed to copying the whole drive? Yeah that makes sense. This is for a friend whose windows machine died and bought a MAC. Salvaging her drive, moving it to an external case and attaching it to the Mac proved the easy part. I'll try that in the morning.

yes. just to see if you can copy anything at all.

if that works, then I would copy the files over - folder by folder and see how that works.

You might want to focus on copying documents (music files, office, etc.) and avoid the applications and settings files.

I was talking to her while reading these suggestions. She can copy individual files, so I can try to do a file by file in the morning. I am going to have to try to migrate her email which is going to be a pain.

what email program was she using?

outlook express in her old computer. Don't know what on the Mac, but I'm betting whatever the default was. In a PC to PC migration, I'd simply open her old pst file and pull over her old emails and contacts. I suspect something like that would work in the Mac, subject to my complete ignorance of Macs.

you might have to do some googling, but I think you need to export the outlook express file into something then move it over.

All I want to do is copy the windows hard drive onto a folder on the mac. But I want a real folder, so I can disconnect the windows hard drive and still have the files.

Hold down the option key when dragging the drive icon to the Mac HDD or a folder or even the desktop. A + symbol will show, let go and it copies the whole thing.

thanks to both