how do I access the mac's hard drive to do a backup using my HP laptop

Came home from a business trip and my wife informs be that the macbook pro 15 isn't working. Called applecare as its under warranty and they're going to send me a box to ship it to them to fix but they wont save any data on the hard drive. Haven't done a backup in months. Cant loose the data.

Question: how do I access the mac's hard drive to do a backup using my HP laptop. When I try to boot up the mac I get a white screen with pastel vertical lines.

Try to boot your MBP with the original install DVD. If it succeeds, run Disk Utility from the top menu "Utilities". Use the First Aid Tab, and run verify - repair. If you can't boot the machine with your install media or if Disk Utility refuses to recognize the hard drive, see the next paragraph.

Remove the hard drive from your MacBook Pro and place it in an external USB carrier. Hook the external carrier to your HP. You will need to install software on your HP in order to read and copy the data from the MBP hard drive to either your HP or another hard drive. A large capacity flash drive can come in handy for that purpose.

The above assumes your MBP hard drive is functional and has not crashed. If it's the hard drive which is defective, your data may be lost for good.

Regards.

New info:
I plugged in a monitor and can see my extended desktop on the monitor. But the problem is that its the extended and not mirror. So I cant open finder.

I can't take the HD out of the MBP since that will void the warranty.

Taking the HD out of the MBP will not void any warranty. This and the RAM are considered user upgradeable.

D. Province said:

New info:
I plugged in a monitor and can see my extended desktop on the monitor. But the problem is that its the extended and not mirror. So I cant open finder.

I can't take the HD out of the MBP since that will void the warranty.

Click to expand...

As you've been advised, removing the HD does not void the warranty. Do you have access to another Mac? If you can borrow another Mac or have a friend who has one help you out, you can boot your machine from his using Target Mode (firewire to firewire) and get your data backed up that way.

Otherwise, try to fiddle around with the controls and see if you can get your MBP to display in mirror mode. Once in mirror mode, you can backup easily.

BTW, I suspect your machine has GPU problems (graphic processor) and that may require a logic board change. Very costly repair but in your case it's under warranty.

Regards.