Problems with externals

[vindunn]

I have two questions I could use help with.

1. I just replaced my old iMac with a new one. I didn’t want to just load everything from the old one onto the new one using TimeMachine. There’s much less storage on the new one. So I copied (not migrated) everything onto a blank external drive. I want to access my mail and my contacts from the old one but I don’t know where to look.
2. I have another external drive that I bought on eBay with an older system on it that I wanted to use to run some software and peripherals not compatible with the current OSs. When I go to Startup Disk in System preferences, the external is recognized along with my new computer, but when it I select and try to restart I get the message “You can’t change the startup disk to the selected disk. This startup disk could not be verified. Select another startup disk.” How can I verify it?

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Vin

 

[TonyAguila]

I have two questions I could use help with.

1. I just replaced my old iMac with a new one. I didn’t want to just load everything from the old one onto the new one using TimeMachine. There’s much less storage on the new one. So I copied (not migrated) everything onto a blank external drive. I want to access my mail and my contacts from the old one but I don’t know where to look.
2. I have another external drive that I bought on eBay with an older system on it that I wanted to use to run some software and peripherals not compatible with the current OSs. When I go to Startup Disk in System preferences, the external is recognized along with my new computer, but when it I select and try to restart I get the message “You can’t change the startup disk to the selected disk. This startup disk could not be verified. Select another startup disk.” How can I verify it?

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Vin

Can you select that external drive in Systems Preferences? Does the new Mac happen to have the T2 chip? It will default to blocking booting from an external volume until you change the status in Recovery. I don’t recall the menu selections in Recovery, but you might want to look through it yourself. To boot into Recovery, restart and immediately hold down command-R.

 

[vindunn]

Hi. Thanks for getting back to me. When I go onto System Preferences, the external shows up. But when I select it, I get the message that that disk cannot be verified and to select another. I have also done the command-R and changed the status. The problem seems to be the verification. I have no idea how to do that.