Macbook grey screen help

[hmig89]

Hi guys,

Got a friend who's asked for a bit of help. His macbook does not go past a grey screen, I know where are a number of ways to troubleshoot this, however my main priority is to get the data off the current drive and back it up to a portable HDD. From what I understand if I turn on the macbook and insert the OS X disc I have (newer version that running os) and hold down the C button I can boot up with some tools available. (apparently this can also be done holding D depending when the macbook was built, I maybe wrong as its been a long morning)

What I want to know is when I enter the bootable area, I know I can run disk utility. If i create a back up from disk utility will it copy everything as if it were a clone? the apple site states it will produce a disk image of your entire Mac OS X disk's contents. If they grey screen is actually caused by something on the HDD will I still be able to access the data after backing up?

In the bootable area can I browse the current HDD and just take the files I need. Ideally I would like to grab everything and put that on a new drive.

I know you guys may need more info so please ask, apologies if I have not provided enough information, not very experienced with macs. Would appreciate your help.

 

[anonymous Mac Tech]

Have you ever done a data backup on any machine that wouldn't boot, much less a Mac? Not trying to be snarky, but there are some general rules of thumb that span all platforms.

 

[hmig89]

Hi,

When I do this on PC's I usually boot into linux live and copy any valuable data to a a portable drive. If I am making a copy of the exact data to a bigger hard drive then I image the original and apply the image to the new drive. I will have to troubleshoot the issue first but just want to be prepared in case i do need to get the data off the drive in the macbook.

what I dont want to do is image it if the grey screen is a OS/software issues as that will be on the image. In which case I will open finder form the recovery tools and back up important data.

Any advance is welcome and I stand to be educated.

 

[johnrobert]

Will Parted magic boot up a Mac to copy files I think it does

 

[hmig89]

Im guessing it will be safer to attempt the image with ddrescue rather than macs disk utility?

I was going to boot linux, use ddrescue and then boot the mac os x dvd and attempt a repair.

Looks like dd rescue as the disk utility does a backup not a clone, so OS etc not bootable. Only other anterantive to do it from the mac book is to create a boot disk with carbon copy cloner on it.

 

[Markverhyden]

Mac's have a BIOS feature called target disk mode. Turn on the unit holding down the T key. Basically makes the machine a external HD for all intents and purposes. Then you can plug it into firewire port on another machine.

That being said you may not have a machine with firewire and OS that will read HFS+. There are a number of live cd distributions that support HFS+ so you can burn a cd, boot from it on the Mac. But you have to make sure it is an EFI compatible version since Macs have been using EFI for several years now.

 

[hmig89]

thanks

Mac's have a BIOS feature called target disk mode. Turn on the unit holding down the T key. Basically makes the machine a external HD for all intents and purposes. Then you can plug it into firewire port on another machine.

That being said you may not have a machine with firewire and OS that will read HFS+. There are a number of live cd distributions that support HFS+ so you can burn a cd, boot from it on the Mac. But you have to make sure it is an EFI compatible version since Macs have been using EFI for several years now.

Thanks Mark,

I have linux mint which should work, I have a firewire port on the front of my corsair case, can imagine it being a fast one but should do, hopefully it is compatible and live cd can detect it.

Thanks for the support.