When/Why is TARGET DISK mode necessary?

I am hoping for some frank and practical advice from the Mac Gurus.
The background is that I am about a year and a half into a move to mac from a "PC" (really Windows XP on Boot Camp on my Mac Pro) and I now have both the MacPro running Snow Leopard and the MacBookPro running Snow Leopard.
I had a heck of a time with permissions and other assorted complications in trying to get my data MOVED from the PC environment and now I am finding that I still have assorted issues (various errors and permissions and file in use etc) in MOVING data from the MBP to the MacPro. My routine now is to COPY data from one machine to the other machine and then to go back and DELETE the folder on the originating computer. I do this because if I force a move by holding the option key down, I find that I am a total and complete loss as to WHAT has been moved and what has not been moved and if the folder that was being moved has multiple SUB-FOLDERS with files in them it is almost impossible for me to determine how to recover from this - effectively - crash. Previous advice has been to simply do an Undo but this is impractical in the sense that I cannot stop my day simply because I want to move a folder that will take a couple of minutes.
Also, I am now trying to make sure that I PLUGIN to Ethernet and TURN OFF the Wifi in order to make sure that I am moving data via Ethernet.
To be honest the decision to COPY data is a new one and I am not sure how effective this is going to be but I have been running into a lot of errors when I was force moving data. This always seemed to me to be a much "cleaner" way to do this since it meant I was not open to the possibility of making a mistake as to what had been moved already (in a hectic day or with a long time for a copy of data) and it also seemed to me to be a good check that everything had been copy-moved since the computer was deleting the originating folder, instead of my doing it manually.
Anyway, long story short -
1. Are there any "cleaner upper routines' that I should be running on these two machines to prevent these various errors and/or to check that everything on each machine is copascetic?
2. /When/ do you decide to boot into Disk Mode and do you basically check the size of your large folders before Moving or Copying Data in order to do this? I assume you can only use target disk mode in firewire is that right?
3. How do folks work in a large networked office with big amounts of data moving around? I mean, is my experience typical and if not, why am I having such difficulty with this?
Thanks for any advice

See mount section in 1st linked article.
Disk Unmount Using Terminal

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Why MBP heats when working in target disk mode?

I connect my MBP to iMac using target disk mode through Thunderbolt interface, close the lid and work on iMac booted from MBP's disk. My understanding is that in this mode MBP should consume very little energy because CPU and GPU are mostly inactive. But I can feel that MBP actually heats up considerably. It not critically hot, but still hotter than I would expect. Can someone explain why this happens?

For FireWire Target Disk Mode, if there are two drives connected to the same IDE bus, I believe only the one that is set as Master is accessible from the "other" computer. So it's possible that your optical drive is Master and hard drive is Slave, in your config.
Copying the files to the external drive, while the iMac G4 is still bootable, was a good move.
Once the data is safe, you might try the following (assuming you are able to continue starting up that iMac). Download a cloning utility, such as Carbon Copy Cloner
http://www.bombich.com/
Clone the internal drive volume to a FireWire external drive volume. Set System Preferences Startup Disk pane to start up from the clone on the FireWire drive, and try to start up from the clone. While started up from the FireWire drive, you can run Disk Utility on the internal drive. Maybe you can do a Repair Disk successfully.
You can also use Disk Utility to completely erase the internal drive. Be sure to select the internal DRIVE (not the volume indented under the drive) in the sidebar, then go to the Erase tab. Doing an erase in this way will re-partition and reformat the hard drive. That may get rid of your data corruption problem.
Then, clone the clone back to the internal drive, and try to start up from it. If there was an underlying hardware problem on the hard drive, this will not fix it. But if it was just data corruption at the volume level, that iMac G4 may still have some life left.

Data recovery options if drive not accessible through Target Disk Mode

I have the classic data recovery question: my computer seems to have failed, and I'd like to save some data. Thanks in advance for any advice.
Details:
- Most recent backup was about a month ago to Time Machine (unfortunately, this laptop went off on a long trip and didn't have access to the destination disk, and then when it came home was running very slowly and my wife halted the TM backup thinking it was slowing the computer down). Some documents have been backed up more recently via Dropbox and/or Mozy, but not a couple important ones
- When booted in Target Disk Mode, no drive shows up on the computer to which I connect it
- When I boot from an OS X CD, a drive appears in Disk Utility with no volumes on it, and the options to 'repair disk' and 'verify disk' are greyed out.
- When I try to just start the computer up, it gets to the grey screen with the apple and just spins.
Questions:
- Should I attempt anything else myself? I've never learned about Lion's Recovery Mode; can it be used to copy some data off, in the unlikely case that this computer would boot into that Mode? Would any further attempts to boot, etc. potentially reduce the chances of a professional company recovering data?
- I'm planning to take this to an Apple Store today to confirm that this is indeed a hard drive problem and not a failed mother board or something; is there a way for me to do this myself? In the past I've used Hardware Test CDs from Apple and stuff; I don't know if those still work on modern computers.
Thanks again for any help!

I know I used to have a copy of Disk Warrior, but can't find it and it's probably out of date. I downloaded the Data Rescue demo, but it only got partway through scanning the disk and then failed. It told me to 'clone' the disk, but after about three days of trying still wasn't making much progress on it, so I gave up.
However, I was able to recover the few important files I needed simply by removing the drive, putting it in an enclosure, and connecting it via USB. After 10 or 20 minutes, Finder gave me a message that said something like, "this disk cannot be repaired, and is probably damaged. You can still access the disk, but copy everything off ASAP because it will probably fail soon." Some files indeed couldn't be copied, but I could copy the things I needed.
I assume that this is a hardware problem. To confirm, I assume that I can check it without having DiskWarrior simply by trying to reformat it? If it can't be reformatted, I assume there's no chance that it is a functioning drive. Is that right?

Can I use Target Disk Mode over USB?

When I enable Target Disk Mode on my MacBook Pro, can I connect that via USB to a PC (which doesn't have FireWire) and use the Mac as an external hard drive?
If not, are there any third-party products which would let me do this?

No. I doubt you can use FW mode on a PC anyway.
The cost of USB or FW external drives is so low buy one for the PC. IF it is formatted FAT32 then the mac and PC can both read and write to it.

Boot up from target disk mode doesn't work. (Why?)

I have a 2010 Macbook Pro, and a 2013 iMac. I connected the Macbook pro with the firewire cable to the iMac, and enabled target disk mode on the laptop. (It is successful because I see the hard drive appear on the iMac desktop.
I restart the iMac and hold 'option' to show the hard drive list, and sure enough the Mac Book Pro hard drive appears. I select it, and this lovely icon greets me.
From this point, I have no idea what to do.
Would you happen to know why it doesn't work and/or how to fix it?

I am able to do that... this is not the problem.
I have seen people boot up from the hard drive using target disk mode. When I try to do it, it doesn't work. Does this feature still exist?

Macbook in target disk mode locks up when trying to transfer files to another computer. Suggestions?

A week ago I installed snow leopard on my girlfriend's macbook without backing anything up. Dumb idea I know. The installation failed multiple times. I ran her computer in target disc mode to try to save what files I could. Now when I try to transfer files it will freeze up at different times. Sometimes I can transfer a huge amount of data like 4GB's and the other times it locks up trying to transfer 4kB's. I'm at my wits end trying to figure this out. I can see the files but can not transfer them.
Any suggestions or past similar past experiences?

Hi Anand,
Have you noticed when you plug the drive in whether its making any sounds? You can put your ear up to the drive on the Macbook. Its located on the right hand front sided of the top case.
Also, check to see if the target disk mode icon is moving after a few minutes. If the firewire icon has stopped moving it usually indicates that theres something seriously wrong (probably mechanical) with the drive.
Id definitely give Disk Warrior a try. Especially if you have a situation where you can hear the drive running or spin up but it doesn't make any sound after that. Hope this helps.

Fan noise when I Target Disk Mode - power supply or 500 GB drive, or RAM?

I have a Revision B iMac G5 which falls squarely in the power supply replacement program and has had the power supply replaced twice. I'm wondering if my extra RAM, or larger hard drive could be to blame for the fan speeds upramping at random during normal operation, and always when I Target Disk Mode the machine. I have a Western Digital WDC WD5000KS-00MNB0
and two 1 GB RAM modules with the following spec PC3200U-30330.
Before I try to pin down the cause one by one, has anyone noticed whether there are 500 GB drives on these Macs which will not up the fan speeds? Has anyone noticed whether target disk mode on these models will not increase the fan speeds when RAM is upgraded to 2 GB?

I have the same iMac as yours. Changed the original 80 gig hdd to a 250 gig. Both drives are seagate barracudas. I also upgraded the memory to 2gigs. The fan noise was terrible.
6 months later a ram module gives up the ghost. I originally thought hard drive, so purchased a Western digital 500 gig WDC WD5000AACS-00ZUB0. (The green power series).
http://www.wdc.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=338
Fans very quite. still waiting for the replacement ram module;
to see if extra ram will increase fan noise
.

What is the set-up when transfer files through target disk mode

I'm a bit confused on how to set up the macs to do a file transer in target disk mode. I am transferring files from an imac to a macbook pro. I have the cable 6pin to 9pin. Now what I can't remember (apple.com instructions is what confused me) is on which computer do I hold down the 'T' on start up? Is it the computer I am transferring the files to? ( in this case the macbook pro). I use to do this fairly often, but not recently, and I have forgotten. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Transferring files between two computers using FireWire - Apple

Power Mac G4 1.25Dual shuts down when pressing T for target disk mode

I am hoping someone might be able to help me with this. I am trying to put my G4 dual 1.25Ghz into target disk mode to transfer my apps and settings to my new Quad G5. I start the G4, hold "t", and instead of showing me the comforting bouncing firewire symbol, the computer shuts down completely. Restarting it without holding "t" will result in normal bootup. I have tried a different keyboard and power cable to no avail. I have reset open firmware, reset the PMU all to no avail. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks for the response Dale. Unfortunately the computer I am putting into Target Disk Mode (The G4 1.25Dual) definitely has an ATA bus. I use target disk mode with other computers in the studio almost daily so was somewhat surprised to see that this one just shuts down instead. I am still hoping someone might have some insight.

Why can't Disk Utility wipe my old iMac in Target Disk Mode?

I want to donate my old iMac G3 with all my personal data removed.
As all my old start up disks are long gone I went online and followed advice to wipe it remotely. I connected the G3 via FireWire to my 15" MacBook Pro (late 2008, running OSX Lion 10.7.5) and restarted the G3 in Target Disk Mode. I opened Disk Utility, selected the drive (not the iMac partition), selected Erase, renamed the drive and chosen the 7 pass option. And waited...
After leaving it overnight, I awoke to find it was still preparing. I then Skipped that stage (it gave me the option) and left it for 24 hours. It was still skipping, so I had to Force Quit Disk Utility. The G3 is perfectly fine, and Disk Utility works as I just erased a memory stick as a test.
What's going on?

You need to do the following:
Drive Partition and Format
1. Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder.
2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID then click on the OK button. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed.
4. Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Security button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.
6. Click on the Erase button. The format process can take up to several hours depending upon the drive size.
Only use a single-pass to zero the data. Any more is overkill and will take many hours to complete.

Using Target disk mode from hard drive which is starting to fail, when I move files, I get a preparing to copy message but nothing happens. Any ideas?

Hello, i have a MacBook Pro. The hard drive is failing to such an extent that I can't currently use the computer, only things like utility mode etc. I have connected it unto my iMac and using a Firewire in target disk mode, I am attempting to move files across using that mode. The HD of the Macbook Pro appears in the IMac devices menu and I copy and paste the appropriate folders/files but as I do this I get a progress bar which says "preparing to copy" but then nothing appears to happen. Any ideas on what to do? Is there a password or other issue here that I am over-looking. Perhaps the hard drive of my macbook pro is so corrupted that I can't move files over. Any help would be great?

Try moving smaller groups of files. I' guessing that you don't have a backup huh?

Flashing Question Mark Folder after Clean Install in Target Disk Mode

I have an old iBook G4 with a failing optical drive and the need to reformat the hard drive and re-install OS 10.5.4. Since the optical drive is failing and unpredictable, I figured I'd do everything in target disk mode.
So I mounted the hard drive of the iBook to my Mac Pro via Firewire in target disk mode. I was able to successfully format the hard drive of the iBook, zeroing out all the data with 7 passes, and I was also able to successfully install OS 10.5.4 from my original Install DVD, again in target disk mode.
After the install was complete, I went through all the registration process and User Account setup and the iBook booted fine albeit still in target disk mode. So I shut down the Mac Pro, turned off the iBook and unplugged the Firewire cable. My Mac Pro booted up just fine afterward. But the iBook now gives me the flashing question mark/finder folder.
I know this means that the iBook is having trouble located a startup volume, or that the startup volume is corrupt or missing data. How can this be, though, after a reformat and clean install? Did I do something wrong in target disk mode? Or did I neglect to do something necessary?
Thanks for anyone's help on this.

Thanks, Niel.
I don't see APM as an option in Disk Utility when booting from my Mac Pro. I only have Mac OS Extended (Journaled), Mac OS Extended, Mac OS Extended (Case-sensitive, Journaled), Mac OS Extended (Case-sensitive), MS-DOS (FAT) and ExFAT.
How do I get my Mac Pro to repartition the iBook properly in target disk mode?

Help: Windows XP on MacBook Pro Boot Camp Partition via Target Disk Mode

Firstly, let me lay out my situation. I have an old MacBook Pro (2,2) with a broken disk drive. It was dropped in its youth and can no longer read from or write to CDs or DVDs of any kind. I have just recently bought a new MacBook Pro to replace it (6,2) and am currently trying to convert the old computer into an XP machine through Boot Camp. I'd like to be able to do so without having to buy an external disk drive.
After a clean install of OS X (10.6.3) onto the old machine, I successfully partition 85GB of space (although I previously attempted the same with a 32GB file system to no avail as well) for XP to be installed upon. Because I cannot boot my XP install disk directly from the broken disk drive, I then close Boot Camp Assistant and shut down the computer. I start it up in Target Disk Mode to be accessed from the new MacBook (6,2).
Once the old MacBook is connected, I insert my XP install disk into the new MacBook (6,2) and boot from the disk. After allowing the XP (Professional) boot to load the install files, I arrow-key down to my 85GB partition (FAT32, named standard as "BOOTCAMP") on the old MacBook (2,2)'s hard drive and select it as the partition I would like to install to. This is where I am directed to a new boot window that tells me in a series of paragraphs that the XP installer cannot reach the selected partition for what seems to be a number of reasons. What it seems to be trying to say to me is that it cannot do a remote install of XP on a Target Disk Mode-connected machine, while not "knowing" that I am trying to do so. It's a similar message to the one that Boot Camp Assistant shows when one tries to create a Boot Camp partition on a machine that is being accessed via Target Disk Mode (Apple puts it much more clearly than Microsoft).
I'd be perfectly content, albiet slightly vexed, to conclude here that it is not possible, shuttle over to the nearest Best Buy, and purchase an external disk drive if it weren't for one thing: I tried the same thing two weeks ago with Ubuntu 10.10 and it installed perfectly on the Boot Camp partition I had created then (I have since wiped all and installed OS X cleanly on the laptop).
Here comes the point/questions:
If the Ubuntu boot disk can access the partition, why can't the XP boot disk?
Is there some way to convince the boot system that the drive is local, rather than being accessed via Target Disk Mode?
Is there an easy solution that doesn't even require that, and will allow me to install to the disk over a firewire connection?
If anyone's knowledgeable and/or brave enough to tackle this one, I'll be eternally grateful. Heck, I'll be grateful if anyone even attempts to tackle it.
Thanks,
-Alec Page

Windows XP will only install from the optical drive. Target Disk Mode does not work with Windows volumes. Windows will not install from any external device.

Hard disk not recognised - will not boot from cd & No FW Target Disk mode

hi,
some help would be greatly appreciated.
Some time ago i was switching internal hard drives around and wound up with a kernel panic of some sort (see my previous posts).
following on from this I have tried FW target disk mode with no success, and it will not boot from a retail Tiger install disc (this machine has tiger installed (i think!). I can't force a boot from the optical drive and i also can't even force it to eject the disc inside to try another install DVD/CD (I have panther discs lying around also).
when i start up with the c key nothing happens, but when i start up with the alt/option key i get a closed padlock symbol, password entry field and a "right facing arrow" button.
anyone got any clues with this? i'm guessing it could either and/or be an internal hard drive ribbon failure (i have swapped internal HDs multiple times in this machine, which can't be good for it) or the familiar PRAM problem (although why would it not boot from an install DVD if this was the case?). I have changed the power supply unit in the past due to having a power cable snap off inside the original one - damage to PRAM caused by this?
help would be muchly appreciated!
Jesse

Hi, Jesse. Remove the hard drive and its cable, then see whether you can start up from a CD or DVD. If that works, replace your hard drive cable.

HT1661 Problems mounting Imac in target disk mode on retina laptop with a solid state drive as host

I'm trying to use an Imac in target disk mode to copy files from it to a new retina display laptop with a solid state drive, but the target drive will not mount even tho it does start in target disk mode. I have all the proper firewire connection. The Imac will not respond for more than a few minutes before crashing when started from its own system. I would like to salvage a few files from it before I perform a clean install of the system.
Anyone has any idea why it wont mount in Target mode onto the retina laptop? Help!
Thanks in advance. :-)

Mac OS X doesn't offer a "clean install" option.
I'm assuming your target Mac is running 10.6?
And you setup the target Mac without adding a Firewire cable until after the Firewire logo appears on the screen?

When/Why is TARGET DISK mode necessary?

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