Powerbook Hard Drive Help

September 27, 2005 8:42 AM

How do I recover data from a Powerbook hard drive?

I'm pretty sure I fried my logic board by spilling a drink on my Powerbook (G4, Titanium). It will not power on at all, no firewire target mode, no safe mode, no chimes, nothing (although I can get the caps lock light to turn on and off). It's over 4 years old, so I'm not going to get it fixed, but I would like to recover the data on the hard drive and transfer it to my iMac G5. Is there any cheap/easy way for me to do this at home?

posted by pfuller to Computers & Internet (6 answers total)

Best answer: The cheap and easy thing, if you have no use for the rest of the computer and don't care whether you risk breaking it, is to take it apart and remove the hard drive. Buy a USB 2.5" hard drive enclosure (here's one for $10. ) Put the one into the other and plug it into the destination computer.
posted by Zed_Lopez at 8:56 AM on September 27, 2005

If you really aren't going to get it fixed, and if you can extract the 2.5" hard drive out of your Powerbook, assuming it's not damaged, then you can probably connect the raw drive to your iMac using a IDE to USB cable.
posted by jaimev at 9:00 AM on September 27, 2005

adding to Zed's comments you are in luck that it is the Tibook too. that is THE EASIEST powerbook to work on. take the screws out of the bottom, and the drive just pops out. best of luck with it.
posted by ShawnString at 9:00 AM on September 27, 2005

Best answer: oh and another thing, spend the extra cash and get a Firewire enclosure. much faster then usb, and a small FW external drive is REALLY nice to have for back ups. trust me on this.
posted by ShawnString at 9:02 AM on September 27, 2005

Having just gone through this myself, I can reccomend the free fixit guides from this site to help you get your laptop opened up.
posted by Svenny at 9:05 AM on September 27, 2005

Response by poster: Thanks for all your help everybody.
posted by pfuller at 9:25 AM on September 27, 2005