[juicy900]

Hi
My iBook G4 won't start- when I turn it on, it goes onto my desktop picture but nothing else happens.
I think I have to reset it, but I want to save the data on it before I do that. Is there any way of doing this?
Thanks

[Doc HM]

Yes. If you're lucky you can use Firewire Target mode. Hold the T key down while starting the Mac. You should see a blue screen with a yellow Firewire logo on it after a while.

Connect your iBook to another Mac using a firewire cable. Your Mac has Firewire 400 so you will need either a standard 400 to 400 cable or if you have a newer Mac to connect it to you may need to find a 400 to 800 cable.

Your iBooks hard drive should mount up on the desktop of the other Mac, allowing you to copy any files you need.

If the drive does not mount up it may be due to damage to the drive. You might be able to recover things by running a utility like Disk Warrior to try to repair the iBook drive and mount it up.

The next step if this fails is to crack open the case of the iBook and remove the drive (a fairish old job). You can then put the drive into a USB enclosure (it will need to be for older IDE style drives rather than the newer SATA connector.

If the drive still won't mount you are into harder core recovery but you should be fine since the MAc is booting (ish) so the drive seems to be somewhat readable.

[juicy900]

Thanks so much I will try this

[mvip]

Yeah, if not, the only thing left to do is to open it up and get the hard drive. It's not a lot of fun, but not terribly hard either. You will then need a SATA->USB converter (looks like this). That will allow you to pop it into another Mac and copy the files. A Windows PC won't do, as it cannot read the file system.

[Waragainstsleep]

iBooks use PATA drives, not SATA.