My Macbook won't turn on...how to access files.

[innocentsheep]

6 month old refurbished Blackbook died today. Surfing the internet, and then it turned off on its own. Wouldn't turn on. Tried all the things on apple's site (resetting PMU, forcing restart, all that jazz), and nothing brought it back to life. Being stuck in Spain...it kinda makes repairs harder (bought the thing in Canada and am originally from there).

Anyway, that's not really why I made this thread. It's just...being the teenager that I am, I rarely back up my files. So, since I doubt this is a hard drive issue, is there anyway I can salvage my files? I've got a Windows computer and an external hard drive to help with the cause. I highly doubt anything will be able to get saved, but one can hope. Just wondering if any of you had an idea on how I could do this.

Likewise, if you want to help explain what happened to my computer, that would be cool too. Any insight or suggestions on what to do would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Airforce]

Grab a sata to usb adapter off newegg. Hook it up to your drive and plug it into your windows computer.

Now this is where I get stumped. Someone can take over from here. I'm not sure if you can just transfer the files over. I know for sure that OS X can read NTFS, but I've never tried it the other way around.

 

[ahmed.hassan]

Grab a sata to usb adapter off newegg. Hook it up to your drive and plug it into your windows computer.

Now this is where I get stumped. Someone can take over from here. I'm not sure if you can just transfer the files over. I know for sure that OS X can read NTFS, but I've never tried it the other way around.

You can use a piece of software called MacDrive written by a company called Mediafour. This will allow you to read HFS+ (Journaled) formatted HDD's.

Perhaps this could also help? Although I think your computer needs to turn on for this to work, and you need two Macs.

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=58583

Also, if you follow Airforce's suggestion, you'll need to disassemble your Macbook. This website will help you in following the correct procedure to perform this warranty-voiding task:

http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Mac/

 

[mkrishnan]

Both the SATA enclosure option or target disk mode (if the Windows computer has Firewire) should work fine with Windows + MacDrive. So if the Windows computer has a Firewire port, buying a firewire cable is the best option -- just install MacDrive, bring the Mac up in Target Disk mode, and then plug it in via firewire to the Windows PC.

Like you said, it's fairly unlikely that it's the hard drive that went dead in your case. So either doing this or eventually using another Mac to bring over the files should be fine.

 

[ahmed.hassan]

Both the SATA enclosure option or target disk mode (if the Windows computer has Firewire) should work fine with Windows + MacDrive. So if the Windows computer has a Firewire port, buying a firewire cable is the best option -- just install MacDrive, bring the Mac up in Target Disk mode, and then plug it in via firewire to the Windows PC.

Like you said, it's fairly unlikely that it's the hard drive that went dead in your case. So either doing this or eventually using another Mac to bring over the files should be fine.

Unfortunately the computer doesn't start up, so the target disk option is out of the question. Therefore, the SATA connection sounds like the only viable avenue of exploration.

 

[mkrishnan]

Unfortunately the computer doesn't start up, so the target disk option is out of the question. Therefore, the SATA connection sounds like the only viable avenue of exploration.

Perhaps... lots of times, though, computers that "don't start up" will still successfully come up in target disk mode. Either way, though. Pulling a drive out of a Macbook is easy.