How to Boot a MacBook on to a Desktop
Most MacBooks have the capacity to be booted in "target mode," which allows them to be used as an external hard drive with a desktop Mac such as an iMac or Mac Pro. Like most external hard drives with a bootable version of Mac OS X, the desktop Mac can be booted off of this drive.
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Instructions
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Shut down both the MacBook and the desktop Mac.
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Connect a FireWire or Thunderbolt cable directly from the MacBook to the desktop Mac. MacBooks that do not have either a FireWire or a Thunderbolt port are unable to use target mode.
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Start up the MacBook while holding down the "T" key. Instead of the normal start-up procedure, you will see a blank gray screen and a large icon indicating that you are in target mode.
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Start up the desktop Mac while holding down the "Option" key. Instead of the normal start-up, you will see a list of available disks for Mac OS X start-up. Click on the drive for the MacBook. The desktop Mac will start up off of the external drive.
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Turn off target mode by shutting down the desktop Mac first, then holding down the power key on the MacBook. Disconnect the cable from both Macs. Both Macs will start up normally the next time you turn them on.
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Tips & Warnings
If your MacBook does not have the ability to boot into target mode, you can use Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper to make an identical copy of your MacBook drive to an external drive, then use that as a boot drive.
