How to get files off an internal stand alone drive

[xkmxkmxlmx]

A friend recently brought me her 01 shot to hell iMac. We tried to power it up, but it would not. I opened it up and come to find that there is some damage to the internals (some parts literally melted).

The only thing I could do was salvage the HDD. It is a standard 3.5".

Hw can we go about getting files off of the drive?

 

[Glen Quagmire]

Take the drive out, plug it into an external USB enclosure, attach it to another Mac et voila!

You could try taking it to an Apple Store if there is one local to you, but I wouldn't be surprised if they charged you.

 

[Paulywauly]

Take the drive out, plug it into an external USB enclosure, attach it to another Mac et voila!

You could try taking it to an Apple Store if there is one local to you, but I wouldn't be surprised if they charged you.

+1 here, if it's intact a USB hard drive should be bootable on another mac too. Note you don't have to use a USB enclosure, you could also try a USB drive dock (works the same way, but the drive slides in like an iPod into a docking station)

 

[xkmxkmxlmx]

I figured as much, thank you.

I had doubts because it is not a general external drive and all the files are within the OS that is installed on it.

 

[tom vilsack]

one other idea....

if you or a friend has a windows desktop computer you could try temp hooking it up as extra sata drive and then using HFSExplorer to see contents of the drive and then save those contests to dvd/thumbdrive ect....

note: install HFSExplorer first (or windows will not reg drive and ask to format it...which you dont want!)

http://www.catacombae.org/hfsx.html