Replacing hard drive on a PowerPC Mac G4

E

eelalien

Registered
Hi -
I am going to replace the hard drive on a Mac G4 - as you can see below, it has been partitioned and has run out of drive space for the OSX start up disk. I no longer need OS 9, but do want the additional space for the start up disk and more in OSX, anyway. I purchased what is essentially the same drive only with 80 GB. I want to know if I need anything other than the original system CD to accomplish this swap.

I have an external LaCie 250GB drive to back up files (and clone the old drive(s) using Bombich?) , but do not want to make this any more difficult than I need to. All I want is the new drive to be the Start up disk, and be able to use stuff from my old OSX system without having to re-install everything, if possible. Any suggestions/instructions would be most welcome. Thanks!
(One thing - I considered simply wiping out the OS9 partition, but after reading horror stories and complicated maneuvers involved based on others' experiences, opted for the bigger hard drive replacement instead.)
Lee
 
Why not just add the new drive to your machine. The IDE and power cable should already be in there to add a second drive. Then just clone the old OS X system to the new drive after you format it.
 
That is what I will end up doing, so I tested the new drive as a slave drive, with the original as the master. Boots up fine from the old drive, and I can see the new one. HOWEVER - I want to boot from the NEW one as the startup disk. Can I configure the new one to be the startup disk while installed as a slave drive, and then swap them around (i.e., old one slave, new one master), or do I have to initialize the new one from scratch (as I was advised to do)? I want to minimize hardware tinkering as much as possible, but want this to come out right without having to install/uninstall the system software...

Thanks for the help.
 
Hello eelalien.

Yes, the easiest way around your dilemma is to install a new drive as big or bigger than the one you currently have. Then using a program like "Carbon Copy Cloner" (or another similar free downloadable cloning utility) clone your existing startup OS X system files to the new drive. Simple.

However... You can only have one (1) master drive. The other will have to be a slave (which means you cannot boot from it). You can make either drive the master or slave by setting the PINS (or jumpers) on the actual drive. Usually 'no jumpers' creates a slave drive, and 'one jumper' is needed to create a master. The printed sticker on the actual drive should tell you where the jumpers need to be placed on the pins in order to create the desired drive. Should you ever need to boot the old drive - just change the jumper settings back - easy.

So... it should go something like this:
1 - Shutdown the computer.
2 - Open up and install new drive as slave.
3 - Power computer up - clone OS X drive to the new hard-drive. (If new - best to initialize before putting data on it)
4 - Shutdown - swap drives around and change the jumper setting on each drive.
5 - Power computer up - the new hard-drive should boot.
(If it doesn't - restart holding down the option key and select the new drive as startup disk.) Should you ever need to boot the old drive - just change the jumper settings back - easy.

Note - it is best to swap the drives around (even though it might work without doing so). Apple tried to makes things easier by colour-coding the special short ATA ribbon. Blue = motherboard. Grey = slave. Black = master.
 
However... You can only have one (1) master drive. The other will have to be a slave (which means you cannot boot from it)
Click to expand...

Not true. No need to set a specific drive to be Master or Slave. Either will boot fine and it doesn't matter if the boot drive is a slave drive.

Open the Startup Disk PreferencePane in the System Preferences and select the drive you want to boot from. Then it will boot from that drive all the time.
 
"Master" and "Slave" doesn't mean squat except for, bascially, "Hard drive A" and "Hard drive B".

Just because it's called "master" doesn't mean it can do anything that a "slave" drive can't, and just because it's called a "slave" drive doesn't mean that it's subservient to the "master." It's just a way of differentiating between two drives on the same bus. Think of it as "1" and "2", or "A" and "B". Neither has precedence or operates any different from the other.

You can boot from either a Master or a Slave drive, just like bobw said, with no problems at all.
 
Thanks to everybody for your help with this! After dickering with Bombich Carbon Copy Cloner for three days, I finally got a complete, bootable copy (FYI -I think what did did it was getting it to "Repair Permissions" on the source disk...I am not sure, but CCC is not all that intuitive, I find). So that turned out to be the biggest problem, in terms of time spent.

In support of tumbleguts, I found a response from "Dinko" in the macosx Question/Response archive to this similar question, and he pretty much said the same thing in regards to master/slave switches. Anyway, I believe that the master/slave thing is fairly irrelevant in terms of bootability, although I did set the new drive to master and the old one to slave just to be on the safe side... the machine will boot from either whan instructed to in Startup Disk.

Again - THANKS to all, and especially to macosx.com for even existing!
 
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