Some adventures with target disk mode

[struggle4progress]

To be honest, there are no adventures here. But there may be eventually

The object is to investigate accessing an OSX machine via firewire target mode

In principle, this is easy:
(1) boot up the host machine
(2) connect the host to the OSX target machine with 6-pin 1394 cable (firewire)
(3) boot the target; as soon as the machine turns on, press the t key and hold it down until the firewire icon appears on its screen
(4) the primary hard drive of the target should appear as a drive available on the host machine
(5) but DO remember to eject/unmount the target from the host before turning off the target

I've done this in the past with an OSX host to copy files to the host from the OSX target and don't remember having any problems that weren't easily solved. But I'd never tried with a non-OSX host.

So I just tried it using my newest machine (dual boot Windows 7 / Ubuntu 10.04) as host

1. Windows 7 properly detects an IEEE 1394 compliant device. But currently, I'm stuck there: I have no idea how to access the contents of the drive. If I figure it out, I'll post; if somebody eles knows, please clue me in

2. Ubuntu 10.04 properly mounts the disk on the desktop and gives some access
(A) This is somewhat dangerous: all the usually hidden files show up, so there's a chance to wreak mayhem
(B) File permissions obstruct some access inside the Users folder. That's not a hard problem: just open a terminal and sudo nautilus yields a nice GUI that ignores many of the permissions issues
(i) Now as superuser I REALLY have a chance to wreak mayhem
(ii) Not all file permissions are ignored: for example, I couldn't view a pdf file in the desktop folder of a User
(C) Eeek! Unmounting the target yielded a message like "writing changes to disk" before the target unmounted -- but I didn't think I'd made any changes: I'd just peeked into a few files and closed them again

[struggle4progress]

1. The Windows problem is probably just that Windows can't read HFS disks

There's software to do this, though:

... MacDrive ... lets you view MAC volumes on your PC ... but it costs .... I found HFSX Viewer which .. only allows to read and copy and ... it is FREE! ... http://www.asktheadmin.com/2009/03/mount-your-mac-on-your-pc-using-target-disk-mode.html

... Along with the ability to read and write to Mac disks and volumes, ... MacDrive ... gives you the power to partition, format, analyze and repair disks, while the ... CD/DVD Creator allows you to burn Mac CDs and DVDs ... http://www.mediafour.com/products/macdrive/

... HFSExplorer is an application that can read Mac-formatted hard disks and disk images ... The program ... operates in read-only mode so it is virtually impossible for it to cause any harm ... As usual with software like this: It is provided for free with no warranties ... http://hem.bredband.net/catacombae/hfsx.html

[struggle4progress]

2. MacDrive is easy to use. HFSExplorer may take some thinking.