rescuing a windows laptop on a mac (target mode?)

[yojitani]

Long story short:
Some friends' windows laptop is having some problems - won't startup

The good news is that they bought a macbook

The bad news is that in order to get the windows laptop in some sort of functional condition, they need to reinstall the OS but they have some important files that they absolutely cannot lose (mostly pictures, I believe).

Problem 2: The HD is tucked away and would require me to take apart the computer so I was wondering if there was some way of turning the laptop into some kind of external HD, like target disk mode. I could then connect it to my mac or PC, pull off the files, and reinstall. Is it at all possible to do?

Problem 3: if I can't do 2, then if I took out the HD and put it into an enclosure would my mac be able to remove files from the drive (likely formatted in NTFC)?


I'd really appreciate some help here, they are quite distressed about the prospect of losing what is on the drive (I am too!).
Thanks!
YT

 

[mklos]

Target Disk mode is a Mac thing and requires FW. It doesn't work with USB 2. So you wouldn't be able to do that.

You can take the HD out and put it in an external HD case using either FW or USB 2 and plug it into the MacBook. Since its NTFS you will be able to ONLY drag the files off the HD to the desktop of the Mac. You cannot write back to it, but since you're not going to do that anyways, thats not really a big deal.

Also note that you'll need a 2.5" notebook adapter to go from the pin outs from the notebook HD to a regular sized IDE cable. Notebook HDs use a scaled down version of the connector than normal IDE 3.5" HDs. If its a SATA notebook HD then you'll be ok but you'll need an external USB 2 SATA case.

 

[orangemacapple]

if he can't get his laptop to boot, i doubt that you can get to the hdd with target (assuming his pc has that option).
you will have to take out the hdd and hook it up to your computer (enclosure).
yes, your mac should be able to read his pc drive -- just like if you used a jump drive with files created on a pc.

 

[yojitani]

Thanks! That's pretty much what I thought. I was hoping there was some way of avoiding opening the computer up. It does actually have FW, but with no target disk or equivalent, external enclosure it is!


YT