Help! I need to transfer data from my MacBook Pro to an external hard drive

Hi, this is my first post ever, so let me know if I'm doing this wrong.

My MacBook Pro crashed two days ago. After taking it to the Apple Store to be looked at, they determined that the hard drive needed to be replaced. They recommended that I move that data fromt eh existing hard drive before they replace it with the new hard drive, which is on order. I have a 1 Terabyte Western Digital Passport external hard drive for MAC. The problem is, I don't know how to transfer the data since I can't get past the white startup screen on my MacBook Pro. Is there a way to do this?

There's a number of ways to do this - especially if you have access to another Mac. If you do not, you'll have to ask the Genius Bar to let you keep the defective drive so that you can hook it up externally to an operable machine in order to transfer the needed data (that's assuming it's accessible).

So, it kind of depends on your situation. Have you tried starting the computer in safe mode?

Since you have an external drive, have you ever done a Time Machine backup to it?

I would get your restore disks ready and attach the external drive.

You can boot from the restore dvd or snow leopard disk by holding down the C key.

When you get to the install screen you can choose disk utility from the menu bar under utilities and format the external drive in to 2 mac partitions.

Once done you can continue to install OSX one the first partition and get a working system up and running to boot the mac up.

Once booted you should be able to determine if you can see the macs old internal drive and either manually get your data off it, but consider doing a disk repair on the old drive first, using disk utility from your new working copy of OSX running on the external.

If the drive is still usable you can use CarbonCopyCloner to clone your old drive onto the second partition on the external and now you have a running system on the external and a backup of your old drive.

If for some reason you cannot see the macs old internal drive when you successfully install OSX on the external then come back to the forum for more help

Thanks for replies! I was not able to start the computer in safe mode, and do not have immediate access to another Mac, so was looking for a way to do the backup without one. And I haven't made a Time Machine backup, as I just purchased this external hard drive to deal with the crash.

Since I made the post, I was able to contact a friend to help moving my data, so should not have a problem. However, I feel comfortable now that I have a solution should my arrangements fall through.

Thanks for the help, I really appreciate it!