Transferring Macintosh HD from dead mac to external HD

I'm sure this has been answered, and I've read many of the solutions, but I seem to be missing it. I need it spelled out, simply.

I have a Macbook Pro, running Yosemite that has come up with errors on the drive Macintosh HD. I have a windows partition on there as well, that is bootable. The OS X side is not bootable. The diagnosis for the problem was bad sectors on the disk.

OK, I have an external HD and access to another working mac. As I understand it, the easiest thing to do is to boot the mac with the errors in Target disk mode. Then connect it to the other mac with a thunderbolt cable which will also be connected to the external HD. Then, using the other mac, transfer Macintosh HD to the external HD. Does this sound right?

If so, how is the transferring of files best done? Do I just grab the files and drop them onto the external HD, in this case a Lacie. Do I use migration assistant? Do I use something else?

Thanks for any help. I've never done this before and don't want to tie up the other persons machine for any longer than I have to.

G'day and welcome to the forums.

Have you tried booting into Recovery (Command + R immediately after boot), going into Disk Utility there and running Repair Disk? If no joy you might consider booting into Safe Mode (restart and hold down Shift until gear wheen starts) and cloning the drive to an external.

Hey there! Yes, I tried that, several times. I had heard that some folks got some joy by running it many times and it would eventually work. No love for me though. I don't know how to clone the drive. How would I do this? Would it be the best thing to do, considering I'll be getting a new drive in my machine after I recover the data?

Thanks for your response!

Edit: Computer will not boot up in Safe Mode. Target Disk mode works though. What would be my easiest solution?

Nothing? Is this even possible? I've heard questions 10 times more complicated than this get plenty of responses. Bueller...is this thing on.

The hard drive has gone to heaven. Trust you kept weekly backups before this? You sure can try Target Disk Mode but things may fail. My choice would be popping the failed drive in an external caddy and trying when the new drive and OS is on the MBP:-


http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1613942