Target mode is not 100% reliable, so I would not be comfortable giving up on a drive simply because it failed to appear on a remote laptop's desktop in target mode. Please note, this won't work if the working laptop has an OS that is incompatible with the 17".Īlso, booted up from the good hard drive, you may have increase visibility of the "bad" hard drive.if you see its icon on the desktop, you may be able to open it up and recover files, look at it in Disk Utility, etc. Once booted up, you can verify the laptop's functionality - you don't want to buy a new hard drive only to discover the 17" has sustained additional damage and that the dead hard drive is not the only problem. You can do this by putting the working laptop in target mode, and connecting it via firewire to the 17" in option mode, at which point you should see the working laptop's drive as a boot option, and selecting it should then boot the 17". Thank you so much for any help you can offer!īefore buying another hard drive, I would reverse the target mode process and try to boot the 17" from the working drive in the good laptop. Is this simply reaffirming that the hard drive is broken or am I missing something? I am assuming the recovery option would run on my host computer and that is the last thing I would want. I did that and only see my hard drive and a recovery option. I also read somewhere that I should shut them both down and startup the target computer with the T key, then start up the host computer with the option key held down. But I cannot get my host computer to show the target computers drive anywhere. I successfully connected them by holding down the T key (I get the firewire symbol on the target/non-working mac). I thought I would try that first before taking it apart. I found this website and immediately thought I would order a new hard drive and follow the instructions, but then I saw there was a way to do some repairs by connecting the two computers via a firewire. I took it to the Apple Store and they think the hard drive is now dead, but they do not repair it anymore. It runs the whole start up look and sound, but then freezes on the white apple in the middle of the screen. The case is indented in there about 1/8 inch. But dropped in on a cement floor landing on the bottom left corner.
START MAC IN TARGET DISK MODE PRO
I have a older (over 5 years) Macbook Pro 17" that I gave to my son when I got a smaller one.