target disk mode on a mac is a boot mode.
target disk mode on a mac is a boot mode.
what is target disk mode on a mac?
a boot mode
target disk mode









































target disk mode (sometimes referred to as tdm or target mode) is a boot mode unique to macintosh computers.









































when a mac that supports target disk mode is started with the 't' key held down, its operating system does not boot. instead, the mac's firmware enables its drives to behave as a scsi, firewire, thunderbolt and/or usb-c external mass storage device.
target disk mode
the host computer may run microsoft windows, but with some possible shortcomings: to read a mac's hfs-formatted partitions, extra drivers such as macdrive, transmac, macdisk, or hfsexplorer are necessary. users also must ensure their computer possesses appropriate interface hardware in order to physically connect to a mac in target mode. macdrive also has a read-only option to prevent any accidental editing of the computer in target disk mode; however, this mode cannot be set after an hfs/hfs+ disk is mounted. with the addition of hfs drivers into apple's bootcamp, it has also become possible for macs running windows to read (but not write) hfs partitions, without the purchase of software. users have separated these drivers from the main bootcamp install, and now also install on other windows computers. host computers running linux are also able to read and write to a mac's hfs or hfs+ formatted devices through target disk mode. it is working out-of-the-box on most distributions as hfs+ support is part of the linux kernel. however these filesystems cannot be checked for errors, so for shrinking or moving partitions it is preferred to use mac os.
target disk mode