I have a macbook pro that I cannot boot up and I need to copy the data off of the laptop.

If you have another Mac and a Firewire cable, you can hold t and boot the problem Mac's hard drive to the good Mac's desktop.

If you don't have neither, then burn a ISO oif PartedMagic to a cd, with either Windows 7 right click and burn, the free ImgBurn for Windows, or Disk Utility in OS X.

Plug in a spare external drive, any format, as long as you can read the drive format on the next computer

(Mac's native format is HFS+, Windows Vista and 7 is NTFS. Mac's and PC's can both read/write FAT, 10.6.5 and later Mac's can read and write exFAT as well as Vista and Windows 7, XP needs a free exFAT download from Microsoft)

PartedMagic can read and write to just about any drive format, so you can copy HFS to a exFAT for instance no sweat, it all happens in the background.

Boot from the PartedMagic cd on the problem Mac by holding option and c at the same time, there will be a option to load into RAM, do that and the disk will spit out.

On the left is a MountDisk icon, double click it twice for two file transfer windows.

Use the smaller mount disk window to mount the drives, transfer your files. Once completed unmount the drives (important!) and the lower left corner "start" menu quits PartedMagic.

http://partedmagic.com/doku.php?id=screenshots

@ds store. Explain abit more how to boot up the hard drive onto your good Mac. I have my Macbook Pro that will not boot up! When I hit the power button I hear the optical drive spin but then it just shuts off. I have it hooked up to my G5 using a Firewire. I hold down T on my G5's keyboard but nothing happens. Am I doing it wrong or is my Macbook Pro so dead I can't do this?

I have an update.

I have a better understanding now of how Firewire start up disk works and it seems that I need my Macbook Pro (target computer) to be able to turn on. But that's my problem. It will not turn on so I can't use my other Mac to acces it's drive. Am I doomed? Can I not access my Macbook Pro's hard drive?

You can't boot a G5 (PowerPC processor) from a hard drive with a partition map designed to boot an Intel-based Mac such as your MacBook Pro.

If you can't start up the laptop in Target Disk Mode, you can try removing its hard drive and putting it into an external case. Other World Computing (macsales.com) makes very good ones. It should then be fairly easy to copy your important data from that drive onto your G5's hard drive - assuming the laptop's drive is still functioning normally.

Sorry I keep calling my Mac Pro a G5. I figured as much...looks like I need to remove my hard drive huh...great. I really didn't want to have to do that since I doubt I'll have time. I plan to take it to have it's logic board replace. I assume it's the logic board that is gone out. Thank John Hammer1.