03-07-2012, 09:57 PM

Hello. I am writing to ask for help with my iMac that has "died".

My 2009 iMac will not boot up. I do not get the startup chime, nothing shows on the screen, just beeping sounds. I can hear the hard disk starting up, but definitely nothing on the screen.

May I know whether it is possible to mount the hard drive onto a new Mac Mini or new iMac? As in, after I remove the hard disk from my "dead" iMac, how do I access the data still on the 2009 iMac hard disk?

All help is greatly appreciated because I did not back up recently.

Sincerely,
tkteo

03-07-2012, 11:42 PM

The hard drive won't fit in a Mac mini, and it won't be usable in a new iMac because the drives require custom firmware now.

What you can do is put it in an external USB or Firewire enclosure and use it as an external drive. Then on the new Mac, migrate your user off of it.

03-08-2012, 12:52 AM

Thank you.

Yes, I would like to keep the drive and use it externally / retrieve my data externally from it.

If I purchase an external enclosure such as a Vantec, would OS X Snow Leopard or Lion in the new Mac be automatically able to read both the HFS and NTFS partitions, because my iMac has Boot Camp with Windows 7 too?

03-08-2012, 11:11 AM

Originally Posted by tkteo

If I purchase an external enclosure such as a Vantec, would OS X Snow Leopard or Lion in the new Mac be automatically able to read both the HFS and NTFS partitions, because my iMac has Boot Camp with Windows 7 too?

OS X will be able to read the NTFS partition just fine. If you want to fully recover your Boot Camp, that can be done with WinClone. It's no longer free, but is the only tool I know of that can do the job.