Originally posted by Binhexboy
I've got G4/450 with a 20 Gig & 40 Gig and am Preping for OS X. I'm currently an OS 8.6 diehard, and use 9 on the other drive when necessary. I've got a bunch of audio apps that aren't real friendly with 9 and there isn't a whole lot of extra performance for me to want to switch. Can I partition Hard Drive 1 on the ATA Chain in two - one for OS X, and one for OS 9. Then leave 8.6 on Hard Drive 2. Thus when I boot to OS 9 parition I will have start-up disk control panel that gives my the 8.6 drive as an option and OS X? Am I crazed our does anyone think this will work.
I had to install OS 9 in order to run the <a href="http://asu.info.apple.com/swupdates.nsf/artnum/n11699 ">firmware updater 2.4</a> on my G4/450 Sawtooth, which is recommended before you install OS X. (It was worth upgrading anyway to enable the machine to boot from a Firewire drive.)
I can now boot to OS 8.6, 9, or X when I want to (I use 3 partitions on one disk). When running OS X, you'll need the 9 partition if you want to run any Classic apps. Classic apps can't run on 8.6 in OS X.
So I guess the upshot is, your proposed configuration will probably work. BTW, OS X can use Firewire drives, it just can't boot from them like OS 9 can.