[H-GEN] MacBook booting problems

[Mark Ellem]

If you can make it to a HUMBUG meeting there are a few people that have 
Macs to use target disk mode with (sharing the optical drive on another 
mac via FireWire). I can help you with a new hard drive as well and I 
can install it for you (I was a certified Mac Technician).

It sounds like if it got a new hard drive and optical drive it would be 
as good as new. MacBook's are well supported when it comes to running 
Linux these days.

Cheers,
Mark.

On 26/02/11 08:10, Gavin Duley wrote:
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>
> On Fri, Feb 25, 2011 at 23:22, Johann Kwiatkowski
> <johann at spot-the-dog.com>  wrote:
>> On 25/02/2011, at 11:10 PM, Gavin Duley wrote:
>>> Unfortunately the built-in DVD drive isn't working, hence I was
>>> looking for another way to boot the machine, maybe from a USB drive or
>>> from an external DVD drive. Someone suggested off-list that I could
>>> buy a replacement DVD drive off eBay, so I may well do this. I assume
>>> I'll need a new hard disc, from the rather unhealthy noises the
>>> current one is making.
>> Two other  possible options:
>>   if you have another current mac available is that you can share the
>> dvd player on that for installation on another mac. I know it works for
>> the macbook air or you can attached another mac directly by firewire
>> and boot it into target disk mode, and you can access the dvd of
>> the second machine.
>> but in both cases you need a spare mac.
> Thanks for the suggestions. Unfortunately, this is the only mac I have.
>
>> I've also used carbon copy cloner to back up an OS X system to a
>> usb stick and boot from it, not too hard, but I think you'll need at
>> least an 8 gig stick.
> It looks like this requires another mac, too. Carbon Copy Cloner looks
> like it would be worth trying out, if I keep using OS X on that
> machine.
>
> Thanks,
>
> gavin,
>