Member Avatar for Ra552

:eek:
I'm hoping someone can help me with this...

One of the pins in the cable that connects my monitor to my cpu broke off inside the female connector in the back of the cpu. Hence, I can't connect a monitor to my cpu anymore. Here's the problem - I want to retrieve some files from the pc but I can't anymore. Any suggestions? I have a powerbook G4 and thought about connecting the two with a firewire but I'm not sure what to do from here? Will this work. Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

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Quick clarification about FireWire: Mac "Target Disk Mode" is a Mac firmware/OS feature that lets a Mac present its drive to another Mac. A standard Windows PC will not behave as a FireWire/target-disk source, so connecting a PowerBook to the broken PC with FireWire will not make the PC's internal drive appear as an external disk.

When an extracted drive sits in an enclosure but the Mac does not see it, hardware and interface issues are the most common culprits. Important checks include whether the drive actually spins up (3.5" desktop drives require an external power brick, 2.5" laptop drives are bus-powered), and whether the enclosure supports the drive interface (SATA vs older IDE/PATA). A faulty cable, a USB/FireWire port that supplies no power, or an enclosure designed for a different drive type can all make the disk invisible to Disk Utility or System Information even though the drive itself is fine.

If the drive is enumerated but files are inaccessible, the on-disk format or encryption is likely. Windows dynamic volumes, BitLocker-encrypted volumes, and native Linux filesystems will not mount natively in macOS. Practical diagnostic paths include: attaching the disk to a Windows desktop (internal SATA is most reliable), using a powered SATA/IDE-to-USB adapter or docking station to test the drive on another machine, or — if the original PC will boot — booting a live OS on that PC and copying data off (as suggested by ). These options avoid installing drivers or altering the disk on the Mac.

Data-safety note: avoid writing to the drive until a good copy is made. If the disk clicks, fails to spin, or behaves intermittently, further attempts can cause more damage — professional recovery should be considered. This summary expands on 's enclosure idea, addresses 's Rocketfish symptom, and complements the software-oriented suggestions from and by focusing on the hardware/interface diagnostics and safe next steps.

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Member Avatar for yellow

My suggestion:

Pull the HD out of the PC and put it in a 3rd party external hard drive case. I suggest one that has both USB2.0 AND firewire. Then you can plug it into another PC, or your Mac. The problem is, if the drive is NTFS (which it probably is), your Mac cannot write to the drive, only read from it.

Your other option?

Buy a new video card and (or borrow a) monitor.

Member Avatar for urmyt0y

I pulled the HD out of the PC and and placed it in a Rocketfish external hard drive case, but my mac wont read it. I have a macbook pro with OS X. how can i fix this?

Edited by urmyt0y because: n/a
Member Avatar for jordan0420

get a linux live cd and boot it to your computer then use a second external hard drive to transfer from one hd to another (simplest but also probably not the best solution)

Member Avatar for sDJh

@jordan: That should definately work, but you have to prepare your mac to boot linux (http://refit.sourceforge.net/).

: What filesystem have you used under windows? NTFS should work actually (read-only). But with a 3rd-party plugin you can fully access NTFS.
Why don't you just ask a friend to copy the stuff on a new HD?

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