can I use usb flash with macOS installer to recover data?

[rglz]

Hello Everyone,

Sorry if I ask some basic questions, I'm not a heavy Mac user but trying to figure out if my thought process is correct or not.

My wife has an iMAC running 10.11.6 were it no longer boots up. It was working fine Wednesday night this week and yesterday when she turned it on, it turns, shows the Apple logo, the progress shows it's loading, then about 50% to 75% it auto shuts down. From several forums and other google searches, looks like some people had similar issues where performing Disk Utility or OS Recovery worked for them and for some didn't. In my case when I run the Disk Utility and use First Aid, I get no errors. Apple diagnostics also shows no errors and even tried single-user terminal with /sbin/fsck -fy and returned no errors. I spoke to Apple support and they walked me through some steps too, all of which failed to get the OSX to boot.

So now I'm at a situation where I might need to perform a new/clean install and erase all data. Unfortunately, my wife didn't enable/use Time Machine, so she has no latest backup of her data. Here lies my situation. I need to only copy all the photos and videos on her desktop, so I was thinking of trying the following:

Use someone else's iMAC also running 10.11.6 and create a USB MAC OS installer. I came across this link:
https://www.wikihow.com/Boot-a-Mac-from-USB-Drive

also found this:
https://www.howtogeek.com/213396/how-to-boot-a-linux-live-usb-drive-on-your-mac/

So the question is....if I boot the iMAC using the usb drive with the MacOS installer, would this allow me to try to install/recover the OS on my iMAC?
Would it allow me to boot my iMAC onto the desktop where I can then connect a separate external USB HD drive and copy data from the iMAC internal HD to my external?

If I use the link that explains how to boot the iMAC using a linux live usb drive, would it allow me to mount the iMAC internal drive from the live image and then from there I can connect an external HD and copy the data I need?

I appreciate any feedback, guidance, tips or other suggestions.

thanks in advance!

 

[MacInWin]

Welcome to the forum.

I won't nag about not having a backup, but now your wife has moved from the side of the "will have a failure" to "have had a failure" camp.

If you build a boot usb as an installer, it will boot and you can see the failed drive, but I don't think you can copy the files you want from it that way. The installer ends up with a set of options, but not with Finder as one of them. Maybe someone will come along with a better answer, but I've booted an installer several times and never saw Finder or anything like it as a result.

Can't speak for the linux boot.

If you can get to another Mac, you might try mounting the drive from that Mac as a target disc. Here is the article from Apple on it. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201462
I don't know if it can boot into the target disc mode without the drive being fully functional or not, but it's worth a try.

Good luck with it. Once you get all the files off, you might then try reinstalling the OS over the old version to see if the drive is recoverable that way. An install OVER the existing system should leave all the data intact, but given the uncertainties, I wouldn't try it until I had gotten the stuff I wanted off of the drive, or at least exhausted all channels to do so.

 

[ferrarr]

Have you tried Safe Mode boot, https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201262?

It depends on the size of the USB drives you use? If you have large (GB) drives, you can install the OS onto one of them and boot from that, to get the files off the internal drive, if it is till working. You will need two drives, one to make the bootable USB installer, the other to install the OS X version onto. Then you can start up from the external drive.

You can also use Disk Utility > First Aid on the USB boot drive, to see if that will repair the internal drive.

 

[rglz]

Thanks @MacInWin!

You are my hero! Using the target disc approach worked. I didn't know Mac had this option so after reading the link you posted, I went to Best Buy, bought myself a Thunderbolt 2 cable and started target disc between my iMAC and my 2012 macbook pro. It's working like a charm. I'm copying my data for a few hours now, but looks like I'm able to collect what I need. Thank you so much!

Thanks @ferrarr also for your help in the other post.

 

[chscag]

For some reason which I can't figure out... the above post by member "rglz" was moderated. I removed the moderation and so now it's visible.