[tufdaawg]

hi all. I have a non-functioning iMac G5 (isight) and was wondering if I could take out the HD which has all of my important data and put it in an external HD enclosure and hook it up to my G4 Mac Mini (1.5GHz)? the imac has a bad logic board according to the local mac repair shop.

[shifuimam]

Yes you can. Getting the iMac apart is going to be pain in the ass though.

Go to ifixit.com for a guide on how to take it apart. Pull the drive, stick it in an enclosure, plug it in, and start copying.

[tufdaawg]

hi. thanks. is there a specific type of enclosure i should look for? i know that the hd in the imac is an sata drive, so do all enclosures support that?

[shifuimam]

You just need an enclosure that has SATA support rather than IDE.

If you're doing this as a one-time thing, just get the cheapest one and return it when you're done. Otherwise, esp if you have older Macs, I'd highly recommend getting a usb/firewire combo enclosure. If you go with Firewire, make sure you get one with an Oxford chipset.

[mduell]

On the off chance the banned OP comes back, any enclosure on this page will work with your iMac's drive and Mac mini.