I want to try to boot up a Powerbook G4 externally with my MacBook Pro.

My wife has a PowerBook G4 that has had a hard drive failure according to the Apple people. Her computer won't boot, it just turns on and the little color wheel spins forever. I want to try to recover some data from her computer. I could try loading OS X onto an external hard drive and try to boot her computer that way or I could try to connect my MacBook Pro to her computer and try to use it to boot up her computer. Is either method preferable (or more dangerous) than the other? If either method is possible, do I need to connect them via Firewire or will USB2 be ok? How do I make her computer recognize the external drive as the system disc? A lot of questions, I know, but she starts back at work tomorrow and really needs her computer. Thanks so much.

Welcome to Apple Discussions!
One thing you can't do is use the MacBook Pro's operating system to boot the Powerbook or vice versa. An external Firewire hard drive with an operating system that the Powerbook supports will allow you to boot the Mac, and recover data to a separate partition if data is restorable. As others indicated, Target Disk Mode will allow you to see the other computer's data, if the drive is at all functional. Data recovery tools for this include Prosoft Data Rescue, Subrosasoft Filesalvage, and Boomerang's Boomerang. The partition solution goes as follows:
1. Partition (link explains how), the external Firewire hard drive for a large enough partition to install the supported operating system on, and a second partition large enough to recover the data to from the original hard drive.
2. Install the operating system and data recovery application on the 1st partition.
3. Recover the data to the second partition.
Optionally, you can use the entire external hard drive, and boot off the data recover program's CD using the startup manager
If using the MacBook Pro to see the machine:
1. Backup its data first*.
2. Partition its hard drive if it has enough room to handle both your recovered data, and your existing MacBook Pro's data. Note the limitations on disk space for Macs*.
3. Recover the data to the MacBook Pro from the backup.
4. Use one of the above data recovery tools to recover to the second MacBook Pro partition and target disk mode.
Third alternative, if none of the above works, and your data is worth several thousand dollars or more, check Drivesavers. They are the one company that may be able to recover data that Apple can't, and can do things the above recovery tools can't either.
- * Links to my pages may give me compensation.
Message was edited by: a brody

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I want to try to boot up a Powerbook G4 externally with my MacBook Pro.

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