Swapping drives between Mac's

G

GrBear

Registered
I know the hard drives are swappable between computers (providing it has the same interface). My question though relates to formatted OS drives however.

I have two Mac Pro's (MacPro1,1 and MacPro3,1). Can I swap the drives between them without losing software or reformatting?

The reason I ask is with Windows, it seems to build the system around a specific motherboard configuration. Were you to replace the motherboard in that system, Windows will crash on bootup due to different kernel level drivers on the hard drive.

The reason I'm asking is because I like the way I have everything setup on my MacPro1,1, but want to get the speed boost from the MacPro3,1.

Will this work or will I require a clean format of both drives when I swap them.

Thanks!
 
Usually it will work. A complete install of Mac OS X typically includes all drivers for all models of Macintosh computer that support that specific version of the operating system.

Sometimes it won't work though. You have a higher likelihood of success since you're moving from a Mac Pro to a Mac Pro... if you were to be moving from a laptop to a desktop or perhaps an iMac to a Mac mini (barring the hard drive size differences, of course), then your likelihood of success drops a tad.

It should work, and if it doesn't, I don't think any harm could be done. I would ensure that your operating system is brought completely up to date before doing this, and that the Mac Pro you intend on moving to is compatible with the version of Mac OS X on the hard drive.

A case where it wouldn't work is moving a hard drive with Mac OS X 10.5 "Leopard" from an older Mac Pro to a newer Mac Pro that originally shipped with Mac OS X 10.6 "Snow Leopard" -- typically, Macintosh computers will not boot nor run a version of Mac OS X that is LOWER than the version that came pre-installed on the computer.
 
I keep both computers completely up to date, so that's kind of what I was hoping was that it built a generic install. I mean really, the only possible differences are the video card.

One has a 8800GT (MacPro1,1) and the other has ATI. I'm hoping to move the video card at the same time, however that one might be tricker since the MacPro1,1 required a special one.
 
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