Reading my HDD externally

[virtuosity]

I have experienced a main 320GB hard drive failure in my 24" iMac - which isn't as bad as it sounds as 1) I was considering an upgrade anytime soon anyway, and 2) i have a fairly recent backup

I am taking it to macrepairs tomorrow in manchester so they can replace it with a 1TB drive - however, I want the original hard drive back on which I am planning to take the most recent data off it that wasn't backed up - so was hoping to shove the damaged SATA drive into an existing USB enclosure, plug it into my new iMac, fix any damaged areas on the drive, then restore what data I need (if retrievable)

But, a colleague has told me tonight, that I can only do that if the enclosure has a Firewire connection - I won't be able to achieve it with a USB connection - can't see why, but can anyone confirm if that is correct? - he seems to think it's something to do with how Disk Utility reads from a drive, the security on the drive, and the file structure... but he wasn't sure!!

Anyone help pls?

 

[spinnerlys]

It will work with USB and Firewire, your mate might confusing it with PPC Macs, which were not able to boot from USB HDDs, but were able to read them. But even PPC Macs can be enabled to boot from USB HDDs though.

 

[virtuosity]

It will work with USB and Firewire, your mate might confusing it with PPC Macs, which were not able to boot from USB HDDs, but were able to read them. But even PPC Macs can be enabled to boot from USB HDDs though.

That's great! and what I thought - hey thanks for the swift response!