Apple Hard Drive compatible with Linux?

[quickblueink]

Hey Y'all.
I have an older 3g iBook and the logic board crapped out on me this week. It's the second one to die, and i don't necessarily feel the need to revive it. The machine is ok, it starts up and i can hear it checking mail and logging on to instant messenger. The problem is that the screen is out and the external monitor plug doesn't work either.

At this point I just want to get the data off of it. At first I tried to ssh and telnet in from some other machines on my network. Neither worked...apparently i don't have them turned on. I also tried to map it as a network drive on my windows machine. The user that has all of the data (music and files) that i want is running FileVault. When I map to that user's folder it is empty, it doesn't show any files or folders.

The last thing i tried was to hook it up to a desktop. I have an adapter that lets me plug a laptop drive into a standard IDE cable. I plugged it in as a slave, booted up, and got an error either with the bios or the boot loader...the error is something like "IDE DISK ERROR". After that error it says "OS not found" and hangs.

So here are the questions: Is it possible to plug an apple hard drive into an intel system running linux as a slave, or do i have to install a bunch of crazy drivers and firmware? If it's not possible, how can I turn on telnet, ssh, windows networking, or some other way to get to my data, given FileVault and its quirks (see below)?

The first time my logic board died, it was covered under a recall warranty. I took it to the mac store, and told them i hadn't gotten my data off of it. They networked the drive with another machine using firewire, but my main user folder did not show up. I told them this, and that i was using filevault. They said how odd, and proceeded to do something that actually mounted my hard drive from the store machine during boot, so i actually had to log in and the store machine then was effectively using my hard drive as it's master drive. What did the guy at the store do to acheive this, and how can i replicate it with a friend's mac? I assume that the windows issue i was having above is due to filevault hiding the user's stuff. Am i wrong here?

I appreciate y'all's help,
-M.austin

 

[satrow]

You could try

http://www.tek-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=886067

to enable you to read your data via your adapter on an Intel machine - I don't know if it'll defeat the FileVault encryption though.

You may be better off hooking it up to an old Mac and booting from it?

 

[quickblueink]

Thanks satrow, I'll have to install windows on a desktop tonight, but then I'll give it a go with MacDrive...I'll post back with details around FileVault encryption.

Any other thoughts on networking and firewire mounting are still welcome. Thanks y'all,

-M.austin

 

[quickblueink]

No go so far on MacDrive.

I stood up a windows xp box this morning, but it's giving me the same BIOS level problems as my linux box. I plug it in as a slave, and when it boots it never loads windows. I get a "Primary Disk Drive 1 not found" error (that's the apple HD, primary is disk drive 0), and then it says press f1 to continue, but it hangs there and never loads.

I also tried adding it to the other bus, with the cdrom. I still get "Secondary drive 1 not found" but the OS loads, but macDrive can't see it. I assume since the bios can't identify it, it's just ignoring it.

So unless someone can tell me how to get my bios to load the operating system with the apple drive, then I guess i'm stuck with putting it back in the iBook. Thanks y'all,

M.austin

 

[quickblueink]

Starting to feel like i'm talking to myself, but i got it working. I was having master/slave issues. The drive loaded, and macDrive saw it. However, the directory for my user name is empty, presumably because of the FileVault encryption. I guess the security guys at mac were thinking.

So now it's back to the mac store to try and figure it out.

 

[SYQUEST]

The best bet is to find a compatible MAC to connect the drive to and see if that works better with Filevault and/or drive utilities. The MAC drive file format is NOT compatible with anything windoz. The hardware will interface IDE/ATA, etc. but the file formats are completely different.

Btw, have you tried to connect via Ethernet to your G3 iBook from another MAC?

Hope this helps!

....JIM....

 

[quickblueink]

I haven't tried to connect over ethernet with another mac; my ibook was my only apple. I'll be putting her back together today or tomorrow. I think I'll take her to a mac store or a buddy's house to see if i can get connected. Thanks y'all,

M.austin

 

[mmerlinn]

I am assuming that you have an internal hard drive. If so, you could try removing it and installing it as a second drive in another Mac. I have salvaged info from several drives that way.


mmerlinn

"Political correctness is the BADGE of a COWARD!"

 

[Welshbird]

I had a similar issue, and connected the 'dead' machine to another mac via firewire, and then re-started the dead machine whilst holding down the F key.

This started it is a firewire hard-drive 'slave'

Might be worth a go? (May be too obvious an answer in whcih case aoplogies)

Fee

The question should be [red]Is it worth trying to do?[/red] not [blue] Can it be done?[/blue]