12-14-2011, 05:38 AM

Sorry to launch straight in with a plea for help, but any advice you can give me will be very gratefully received.

My 6 year old mac froze last week; I tried various thing to get it going again but it wouldn't, so I ended up pulling the plug

Now, on start up, I have the broken folder icon. Most of my stuff is backed up but there are one or two things I'd hoped to retrieve using target disk mode, before reinstalling Tiger. (Or trying to reinstall Tiger.)
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Using a borrowed macbook and following instructions on the Apple site, I did a Firewire link to my mac. BUT the macbook isn't showing any connection to my mac.

Am I doing something wrong? Or is the problem in my mac affecting the firewire connection in target disk mode? In which case, do I just need to wave goodbye to the files I'd hoped to retrieve (last 3 months photos of my children - everything else is backed up) and hope I can reinstall Tiger and get my computer working again?

Thank you for any help you can give me :-)

12-14-2011, 12:23 PM

Target Disk Mode connections can be tricky. Check to make sure that your 6 year old Mac and MacBook have the same firewire ports. For example: you can not attach a FW 400 port to one that's 800 or vice versa without the right cable and adapter.

If the ports and cables are OK, there may be another problem. In that situation, you may be able to remove the hard drive from the 6 year old Mac and place it in an external carrier. The carrier has to be of the same type as the drive. If the drive in the 6 year old Mac is IDE, then the carrier will also have to be IDE.

You would then attach the carrier via USB to your working MacBook and get at the files that way.

12-14-2011, 12:29 PM

What exact iMac do you have? 6 years old to me would maybe make it a iMac G5 iSight. Just a guess but mine is over 6 years old. The G5 and later iMacs used a SATA drive BTW.

With mine the SATA controller on the logic board would not read any drive attached to it, so nothing like you are trying would work.

Get back with the model if you can.

12-14-2011, 03:28 PM

Thank you so much for replying

I think you're right Dennis - the EMC number is 2105 - 20" iMac G5 iSight then?

I had to use a 9 to 6 pin firewire cable between my mac and the macbook - not sure whether that says anything about the ports?

My knowledge of hardware is woeful....!

12-16-2011, 02:55 PM

Little bump... x