Old to New G4 Mac Drive Swap

Paul Forbes

Paul Forbes

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Hi all, I'm buying a new G4 to replace my old G4. The old G4 is a 400MHz 'PCI Graphics' and my new G4 is a 1.25GHz 'mirrored doors'. Can I just take my MacOS 10.2.6 hard drive out of my old G4 and put it in my new G4? Thanks.
- Paul
 
Sure, you've got space to add 3 or 4 hard drives to your MDD G4, or you could replace the existing HD, or you could add the old HD (jumpers to slave on the added HD), Your system SHOULD boot up with the older HD just fine. One problem I can forsee, will your new G4 be an OS 9 bootable system, or is that any concern for you? If this were my system, I would add the old HD as a slave, boot up to the old HD, wipe the new HD, clone the old HD to the new HD, boot to the new HD, and reload the 10.2.6 combo update on your new HD. Then do normal maintenance scripts, permission repairs, etc. Should give you a great running system. After that you should wipe the old HD, and use it for storage.
 
Thanks for all that advice DeltaMac. I will also be using Classic on my new G4 and I plan to copy my Classic System Folder to the new machine.
About what you would do:
1) Would you use Carbon Copy Cloner to clone the old HD to the new HD?
2) When you say do normal maintenace scripts, what do you mean exactly and is there any software to do it for me?
3) About permission repairs - do you mean the basic repairs that OSX Disk Utility does?
One final thing: my new G4 has a Radeon 9000 and my old one has a Radeon 7000. Are there any driver concerns?
Thanks.
- Paul
 
1. Carbon Copy Cloner is the backup of choice for many, It's great!

2. Yes, I use OnyX or Maintain1, both offer similar functions. There's others like MacJanitor which many users swear to (or at), any of these mostly run scripts that can also be run manually in the terminal, the apps give you a nice GUI to do those things. Your choice is the one(s) that do what you want.

3. Yes, I usually run a permissions repair after any system software install, including updates.

last answer: The systems come with these vid cards, there's no separate vid driver install like on PeeCees. The system loads what it needs during boot.
 
I would recommend you hook up the two computers via Firewire, boot the old G4 into Target Disk Mode, and copy all your data, programs and settings to the new G4. Then you can clean out the hard drive of the old G4 and sell it, use it for a more dedicated purpose (file server, game server, Seti@Home, etc.) and have 2 computers available to you. This will also serve as a backup measure should anything happen to your new G4.
 
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