hard drive reader

I have several old hard drives from a Powerbook G-4 which I want to recover data/photos from. Where can I purchase the equipment and what are they called?

Also, is there any way to open trash without dragging every single item onto the desktop. In the same subject area, is there a way to recover and read the trash held on an external backup drive?

What you need is something like this:

Amazon.com: Vantec CB-ISATAU2 SATA/IDE to USB 2.0 Adapter Supports 2.5-Inch, 3.5-Inch, 5.25-Inch Hard Disk Drives (Black): Electronics

I'm a little unclear as to your question about dragging items onto the desktop - you're going to have to copy the items from the source and into their ultimate destination. How you do it is up to you - it sounds like you're planning on using the desktop as an intermediate location and that will certainly work.

As to your second question, "Trash" is really just a hidden directory on the filesystem. So, if you can access the drive by way of an adapter, you just need to enable hidden files by typing the following commands into the Terminal:


Browse the disk and head to:

Macintosh HD => Users => <name of the user's account> => .Trash

When you're done recovering files, you'll probably want to run the following command to turn off viewing of hidden files:


Hope that helps.