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I have a Lenovo system with Ubuntu installed on it.

What I'm trying to do is use the Lenovo system to boot macOS that was installed on a hard drive of a MacBook Pro that died.

I saw several posts on creating bootable drives or backing up data from dead MacBooks, but none that specifies how you can boot into hard drive of a MacBook from a Lenovo (or any non-Mac system).

LаngLаngС
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codebee
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    I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because, so far as I know, one can't boot macOS on a Lenovo. – IconDaemon Jan 21 '19 at 19:39

3 Answers3

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Basically an unmodified Lenovo won't read the boot information on a mac os formatted drive, so this won't work.

To read that mac drive, put it into an external drive enclosure and connect to a mac. Success here will also depend on having the user names and passwords as necessary.

Solar Mike
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  • Thanks. Is there a way to modify Lenovo to read boot information on mac os formatted drive? I don' t another mac system. – codebee Jan 21 '19 at 17:29
  • You might consider a virtual machine, but I can't say for sure if that would work, or check out Hackintosh... Outside the scope of this stack though... I would, if I were you, find a friend, colleague or acquaintance with a mac to transfer the data to a drive that works on both pc & mac... – Solar Mike Jan 21 '19 at 17:32
  • For future reference, Ubuntu can read HFS+ and JHFS+ formatted drives that are not encrypted. Ubuntu will only write to HFS+ formatted drives. Since user ids start a 500 with macOS and 1000 with Ubuntu, you will probably need to be the root user in order to access user files. – David Anderson Jan 21 '19 at 20:40
  • @DavidAnderson and if encrypted or APFS ? I still suggest an external enclosure and another mac is safest... – Solar Mike Jan 21 '19 at 20:42
  • I did not say, because my 2007 iMac with Ubuntu, Yosemite, Windows 10 and El Capitan does not use encryption or APFS. I only posted what I could easily test. I suppose to answer, I would have to create a flash drive using encryption and/or APFS and try reading using Ubuntu 18 in a VirtualBox on my 2011 iMac. My best guess is that it would not work. – David Anderson Jan 21 '19 at 20:48
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If you can put the Mac's drive in an external USB enclosure there are utilities that you can purchase and install on your Windows PC to read and write the disk format of a Mac.

For example Paragon Software has utilities to read and write both HFS+ and the new APFS disk formats on a Windows/Linux PC. This would enable your PC to access the Mac's drive and get the info off of it.

All you will need to determine is what the Mac's hard drive was formatted as, HFS+ or APFS. Knowing the model number or macOS version that was installed might help.

Steve Chambers
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Booting such a combination will not work very well and is also most probably unnecessary for mere data rescue operations.

The commercial options for intersystem interoperability with Paragon Software are already in Steve Chambers answer.

But there are more options, cheaper options, and sometimes a bit thorny options. Built into Linux or and easy install from official repositories/github.

If it is a drive that is removable you just need an external enclosure to put the Mac-drive into and then look closer at for example other StackExchanges:

How to read and write HFS+ journaled external HDD in Ubuntu without access to OS X? (if it is HFSplus formatted)

How to mount a HFS partition in Ubuntu as Read/Write? (if it is HFSplus formatted)

APFS FUSE Driver for Linux (if it is APFS formatted, like APFS itself: quite immature and read-only. But for a rescue operations that option may be enough.)

And finally, the drive might have been encrypted with Filevault: Does Windows or Linux have any tools for accessing a FileVault2 encrypted drive's contents?

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