Safe boot from external HD

Hi,

I was wondering if you could help me with the following problem.

I have an 2007 MBP that recently the screen went blank. I assume it's the usual issue with the graphics card.

On the HD I have parallels installed and although I managed to recover all my data (located in my OSX directories) by using the HD as an external HD on a PC (using MacDrive), I'm not able to recover the data that were saved on the parallel's ''windows XP'' desktop.

Unfortunately, I don't have a spare mac but I found somebody who is willing to lent me his macbook for a couple of hours.

Now my question is if I can use my HD (as an external USB drive) to boot on the macbook. I was thinking that if I manage to boot using my HD, I would be able to transfer all my data.

Is this possible and more important is it safe? Obviously I want to make sure that the owner's internal macbook HD will not be affected in any way.

I'm meeting the guy tomorrow so I would really appreciate if you give me some advice.

I'm not a native English speaker so I hope my question makes some sense.

Thanks!
Michael

It may or may not work attempting to boot to your drive - depends on what Mac he has and if the drivers installed on yours will work/function on his.

It's definitely worth the attempt.

Booting to your drive externally and moving data to a new location on that drive or to a 2nd external drive should not affect his Mac...
As long as you make sure you do nothing related to touching the data on his drive.

Hi bobtomay,

Thank you for the answer.

I will make sure that I won't 'touch' his internal HD.

I only need to 'drag n' drop' my files from parallel's to my OSX desktop really. Then I'll be able to access them.

So, if it works will the macbook comes up with my 10.6.8 OS and will look identical to my MBP (ie. directories, softwares, etc..) and his internal HD will just appear as a second HD?

Also, in worst case scenario, I just won't be able to boot to my external HD, right? I mean it's unlikely there will be any other software or hardware complications?

Thanks again for your quick response.
Michael

warpie said:

Hi bobtomay,

...
So, if it works will the macbook comes up with my 10.6.8 OS and will look identical to my MBP (ie. directories, softwares, etc..) and his internal HD will just appear as a second HD?

Also, in worst case scenario, I just won't be able to boot to my external HD, right? I mean it's unlikely there will be any other software or hardware complications?

Thanks again for your quick response.
Michael

Click to expand...

That would be correct.

The other option would be to go ahead and boot his Mac natively and try opening Parallels from your Application folder - have not tried that - so don't know if it will work - probably won't if he's running 10.7 or 10.8. I think Parallels required an upgrade to run in both of those versions of OS X.

As long as you're only moving files around on your own drive - shouldn't do anything to his Mac.

bobtomay said:

That would be correct.

The other option would be to go ahead and boot his Mac natively and try opening Parallels from your Application folder - have not tried that - so don't know if it will work - probably won't if he's running 10.7 or 10.8. I think Parallels required an upgrade to run in both of those versions of OS X.

As long as you're only moving files around on your own drive - shouldn't do anything to his Mac.

Click to expand...

Excellent, thank you!

I was in an apple store a couple of days ago and used a MPBr as native and mine in target disc mode. Not much difference than using a PC with MacDrive really.

In both cases I wasn't able to access the parallel's directories. If I understood correct you should have parallel's installed on the native machine too (it was asking me to choose an application in order to access the files from my machine).

warpie said:

Excellent, thank you!

...If I understood correct you should have parallel's installed on the native machine too (it was asking me to choose an application in order to access the files from my machine).

Click to expand...

That's what I wasn't sure about - it would make sense since the VMs install portions of their software into the system folders of the OS.

Let's hope your drive will boot up for you.