Can I recover data from a Mac hard drive to a PC

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My mothers iMac (model A1173) recently took a power hit and died (black screen, power button is nonfunctional...dead). She had docs etc. on it that she would prefer not to lose, and I'm sure that the hard drive is still
completely operational. She has decided (due to limited $$) not to risk the price of the power supply and so is buying a replacement, either PC (again $$) or a refurbished Mac. Either way I would like to pull her old hard drive and recover the data.
Is it possible to hook the drive to my PC and read it? I know Macs have different formatting, but are there programs that would allow this?
I think recovery facilities are expensive, so we would greatly appreciate any other suggestions for how I can retrieve her data.
 
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*Deleted incorrect information*

You could also use the program MacDrive to make the hard drive writeable from windows 7/XP.
 
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chas_m

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miles: unless something HUGE has changed VERY recently, your info is 100% wrong. Windows PCs *cannot* read mac-formatted drives AT ALL without third-party software such as the one you mentioned.

I'd be happy to be wrong about this, but I don't think I am.
 
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Well that's my mistake then, I guess I didn't realize that the bootcamp drivers were what let me read files from my OS X partition. I've updated my post to make it correct.

The OP still could buy and install MacDrive 9...sorry I don't know of a free option.
 

chscag

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I believe the current version of Paragon NTFS also includes a driver which will allow reading HFS from a Windows machine. But not free. $19.95
 
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chas_m

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A theoretical suggestion, but I'm pretty sure it wouldn't work and/or not be legal:

If the OP's mother still has the install disks for her iMac could the OP use the Boot Camp drivers from it on a PC to access the HFS+ partitioned HDD, or are those drivers like OS X itself & only licenced for use on an Apple-branded computer?
 
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Your best bet is to hook it up to the PC with a hard drive enclose.

A windows PC will not be able to read the disk format, however.......

If you boot the PC with an Ubuntu live CD, or create a smallish Ubuntu partition on the pC (which is easy to do when installing Ubuntu), then Ubuntu will be able to read the disk.

You may have to alter the permissions on the disk in Ubuntu but we can cross that bridge when we come to it.
 

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