I have a neighbor whose 2010 iMac isn't booting. Of course she has no recent backup. She asked if I'd help her get her pictures off - the whole year from the preschool she runs. (She taught my kids once upon a time; she takes a ton of pics.) She says she installed El Capitan in Feb, and she has none of the original disks or any other media. I have no Apple tools on hand. Ground zero.

From what I've seen, it doesn't look like a very user-friendly case to open. I'd like to hold off on trying to yank the drive for now!

The Apple store said the drive isn't failing (I'll double-check; love my spinrite!), but just has corrupted OS files, and they'll wipe and reinstall the OS but they won't retrieve data first. (Hope it's not a corrupted HFS.)

I can config macs just fine, but I'm not a hard core mac guy. Does anyone know of some solution, perhaps a linux boot cd I can create from a windows machine? (I've seen reference to a mac version of the Ultimate Boot CD. Anyone have experience with it?) I just want to boot it up, mount the non-failing drive, copy the pics and any other obvious data to a usb drive, and give it back to Apple. Then talk her into a proper backup regimen...

Thanks!

-jk