Helping a friend with her Mac

Foil · Post by **Foil** » Mon Jul 14, 2008 4:42 pm

A friend of mine is a devoted Mac user (knows nothing else), and recently bought a new Mac machine because her previous one quit.

The problem is, she wants some of the stuff off her \"old\" Mac (which really isn't very old), so she took it to the Apple store, where the techs told her that \"the power supply is dead\" and \"we tested it and can't get anything off the drive, you'll have to send it in for data recovery\", which of course would cost her $$$$$.

I've never messed with Macs before, but I'm willing to bet she's getting mis-information here, or outright scammed.

Anyway, I've offered to help her. However, my knowledge of Macs is limited, and she's a little wary of \"a PC guy\" touching her Mac. A couple of questions real quick:

If it turns out that the power supply is indeed an issue, is it likely that I'll be able to swap out one of mine to check it, or do they typically use a proprietary design?

If I pull out the HD and throw it in my Vista box (either directly or via a HD shell), any recommendations for software to read/pull the Mac files?

Anything else I'm not thinking of?

(P.S. I don't have the models, I'll get those when I can.)

Krom · Post by **Krom** » Mon Jul 14, 2008 5:12 pm

Once you get over the \"OMG ITS A MAC!\" they are reasonably easy to get accustomed too working on. Most of the good ideas in the Windows GUI came from Macs, so the average PC users instincts about where something should be usually aren't that far off.

Now for the PSU, I'm not sure since I've only ever dealt with mostly iMacs (:barf:), however if it is out of the new Intel/x86 Macs it could be swappable with a PC unit, I'd have a look and see what kind of system it is.

If all else fails, you might be able to connect the drive inside the new Mac and copy stuff that way. A PC might be able to read it too depending on what kind of filesystem it is using. Once you connect it to your PC you should be able to find out what kind of filesystem it is and download a driver for windows to read it, sometimes all you get is read only, but that's all you need.

But for starters, I wouldn't trust the techs at all. Assume 99.9999% of the crap they said about the PSU/etc is complete bull and they just don't have a clue about the internals at all/are a bunch of lazy crooks. Dust it out, re-seat all the cables cards and memory on the inside, unplug it from the wall and wait 30 minutes, pull the battery, etc. See if there is any way to get it running on your own long enough to back up the files she wants to a USB flash drive.

Grendel · Post by **Grendel** » Mon Jul 14, 2008 5:19 pm

This may help if you install the disk into a PC (5 days free trial).

d3jake · Post by **d3jake** » Mon Jul 14, 2008 5:33 pm

Depending upon the HDD, you should be able to hook the drive up to your Linux box and have it read it since Linux can read a ton of different filesystems whereas out of the box Windohs can only read NTFS and FAT32.

[RIP]Machete_Bug · Post by **[RIP]Machete_Bug** » Mon Jul 14, 2008 7:57 pm

Perhaps this can be as easy as taking the old drive out its case, slapping it in one of those USB 2 or Firewire cases to make it an external drive, and then just hook it up to the new Mac. Then she could just transfer her files directly, or just keep them all on external storage.

Foil · Post by **Foil** » Tue Jul 15, 2008 2:30 pm

Thanks, guys. When I get the chance to look at her machine, I'll let you know if I come across any more issues.

Cuda68 · Post by **Cuda68** » Tue Jul 15, 2008 4:10 pm

Check your PM's