Dead Macbook Pro, options with good HD?

Wife destroyed my almost new Macbook Pro, but am assuming the HD is still usable.

What could I buy to install the drive in and boot?

What could I buy to install the drive in and recover the data only (other bootable drive)?
For example, available here in town- Apple Power Mac G5 running OSx Tiger 10.4.11

The cheapest used items seem to be the Mac Minis, but unsure what criteria it would need to meet to do either of the above.

Thanx in advanced, Alan

There's basically two options: a case for that 2.5" HD, or a "toaster" style holder that takes one or more drives and lets you plug and play with em (picture):



Most of your PC or Mac dealers in town should have a case to suit your needs, expect to pay $30-60 depending. I'd suggest a Firewire case if you can find one but USB 2 will do in a pinch for that machine.

I would *strongly* not suggest the Power Mac G5, regardless of price. You'll be sorry is all I'm sayin'.

You don't need to be able to boot to the drive to recover the data. Only need to connect it to another computer that can read the drive.

A 3rd option to the 2 listed above would be a universal drive adapter similar to this.
I like this one.

If you try to connecting it to a Windows machine, then you'll also need a driver to enable reading HFS formatted drives - link.

A G5 (or any other PPC) Mac definitely will not permit you to boot from any 10.7 or 10.8 version of OS X which are Intel only.

I would suggest you not buy any used Mac with the expectation that you could boot to the drive you pulled out of the MBP without plugging the drive into it externally and verifying that it will boot the machine first.

Buying another Mac that is running the same or newer version of OS X than was on the MBP, you could also connect the external drive and use the Migration Assistant to import the data from it.