Boot Panther from install disc on ibook without fresh install?

[escottster]

My roommate has an ibook with 10.3.5 installed on it, and about a year ago the hard drive stopped mounting. We've been trying to get the data off the disc, and we may end up just taking it to a professional.

Can we boot the os from the install disc that came with the computer? Whenever we put it in it only gives us the option to install a fresh copy. I tried rebooting and holding down c, but that didn't do anything.

The screen is also cracked, so we have to use an external display to see anything (i.e. we can't see any of the loading screens). Sorry if this is a really stupid question. I downloaded the trial version of Data Rescue II to see if it could recognize the drive to pull stuff off it, but we need to boot into the os to use it.

Thanks

 

[Duff-Man]

Duff-Man says...a couple things come to mind - when you boot from the cd and the installer comes up, one of the menus should have the option to launch Disk Utility, run that and see if it gets the drive mounting again....or, if have access to another Mac, connect the iBook to it via firewire and hold the "t" key when you start it up and see if it will mount via target disk mode, from there you'd be able to copy any files....oh yeah!

 

[escottster]

I ran the disk utility, but it won't mount the drive either. It say the drive is locked and read-only.

My roommate is on his way back with his Macbook Pro. If I can scrounge up a firewire cable from somewhere I'll give that a shot. Does it matter that the Macbook has an intel processor and the i book a mac one?

 

[pit29]

My roommate is on his way back with his Macbook Pro. If I can scrounge up a firewire cable from somewhere I'll give that a shot. Does it matter that the Macbook has an intel processor and the i book a mac one?

No, that does not matter. Good luck - but I bet accessing the harddrive via FireWire will work.