Taking hardrive from EMac and transferring data to Imac

[imac-n-cheese]

I've had an Emac for the past 5 years and the crt recently died. When i bought my new Imac, the folks at the Mac store tried to open the machine up to take out the hard drive and transfer to data. Unfortunately, the screws stripped and they couldn't open the machine, and they are not allowed to cut it open, even with my permission. My question is, can cut the machine open, take out the hard drive and buy an enclosure, transfer whatever data I need and then use that hard drive and enclosure as an external hard drive?. Does this make sense? is this doable by someone who has some knowledge, but not loads? Do I pay someone to do this for me? THanks for any info.

 

[spinnerlys]

This guide might help opening the eMac: http://www.applerepairmanuals.com/emac-disassembly-sheet.pdf

Also consider that the drive in the eMac will use ATA (IDE) as an interface, so your enclosure should have that.

Besides those small obstacles, it should work fine to have your old eMac's HDD as an external drive. I did that a lot with old IDE drives and newer Macs before I decided to go the SATA route.


PS: IDE cable and connector.

 

[Satori]

I've had an Emac for the past 5 years and the crt recently died. When i bought my new Imac, the folks at the Mac store tried to open the machine up to take out the hard drive and transfer to data. Unfortunately, the screws stripped and they couldn't open the machine, and they are not allowed to cut it open, even with my permission. My question is, can cut the machine open, take out the hard drive and buy an enclosure, transfer whatever data I need and then use that hard drive and enclosure as an external hard drive?. Does this make sense? is this doable by someone who has some knowledge, but not loads? Do I pay someone to do this for me? THanks for any info.

Taking apart an emac is a bit of a job because the inwards are so tightly packed but if you can get the shell off you shouldn't have any problems if you follow the guide recommended in the post above (particularly since you won't need to put it back together). The HD is buried quite deep so I guess you don't need to worry about damage caused by cutting open the machine. However, you do need to be careful not to break the CRT since it probably contains high levels of lead compounds and will fill the machine full of shards of glass.

 

[PurrBall]

Just boot the eMac into target disc mode by holding down T after pressing the power button, and wait a minute so you can be sure that it is indeed in that mode (since you cant see the display on yours obviously) and then hook the eMac up to your iMac via a firewire cable and the eMac's hard drive should appear on your desktop. You may need to buy a FireWire 800 400 to 800 adapter if your new iMac doesn't have a FireWire 400 port (which is probably the only one your eMac has)