Target Disk Mode with non-Macs?

2 posts / 0 new
Last post
davintosh's picture
Offline
Last seen: 10 years 2 weeks ago
Joined: Dec 20 2003 - 10:38
Posts: 554
Target Disk Mode with non-Macs?

Hey all. Here's what may be a dumb question, but a friend who is considering buying a new iMac is asking, and I want to give him some halfway intelligent answers.

If a Mac were booted into Firewire Target Disk Mode, could a non-Mac connected to the other end of the FW cable mount the hard drive?

This guy is a web developer, and usually works in Linux, which can read UFS/HFS disks, so that shouldn't be a problem. My understanding is that when a machine is in target disk mode it basically becomes a great big drive enclosure. If that is true, then it shouldn't matter whether the host computer is running OS X or Linux, so long as it can understand how the disk is formatted.

So am I way off base, or should this work? Anybody tried it? I would let him use my PowerBook to try it, but I don't know when I'll see him next. I doubt that he'd change his mind about buying the iMac if it doesn't work, but it would definitely be a boost to his confidence in making the jump if he knew something like this would work.

Offline
Last seen: 17 years 9 months ago
Joined: Dec 20 2003 - 10:38
Posts: 279
hmm... I havent ever tried

hmm...

I havent ever tried this. My pc doesnnt have a FW port, so I cant really try it, but if you have a new world mac with firewire, perhaps you should try it to see if it works with his machine. Also, the Linux box needs to be able to read HFS+, not just HFS.

Log in or register to post comments