mac to mac

June 4, 2009 9:10 AM

how do i have my working macbook connect to my non functioning macbook's harddrive? when i did it in the past a firewire symbol was floating around the screen.

for the life of me i can't find or remember how it's done. all i remember is while i pressed the power button on the old macbook i held down a key, then a firewire symbol was visible on the screen and the drive was visible on my working computer.

i just got data recovery in the hopes of saving whatever i can.

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

Response by poster: okay, sorry for the unneccessary post. of all searches "firewire symbol" gave me the answer. hold T while hitting power.
posted by andywolf at 9:13 AM on June 4, 2009

Holding down the "T" key while powering up the mac will turn it into a firewire drive and give you the floating firewire symbol, assuming it is functioning enough for that.
posted by lordrunningclam at 9:16 AM on June 4, 2009

Yep, holding down T does the trick. Make sure to not let go until the Firewire screen appears.
posted by reductiondesign at 11:10 AM on June 4, 2009

does anyone with a Post-Firewire MacBook have experience with this? I asked the Genius's at the Apple Store, and they said something like "it's now done with ethernet"...but I'm not sure what "it" is. Surely not Firewire Disk mode... Hmmm. This is one obstacle to my buying a MacBook instead of a Pro. (Of course, this may all be moot, post WWDC)
posted by dylanjames at 11:13 AM on June 4, 2009

I just pull the drive and put in in an enclosure. The "it" is probably data migration.
posted by now i'm piste at 11:40 AM on June 4, 2009

The "Migration Assistant" app is what they're talking about. Previously if you got a new Mac, you could run that program and it would instruct you to plug the two computers together using a Firewire cable. Now you do the same thing but with an Ethernet cable instead.
posted by davextreme at 1:16 PM on June 4, 2009