[glen4cindy]

Hello,

I am new to Macintosh, and have bought an iMac on E-Bay and would like to upgrade the 6 GB hard drive to a 20 GB hard drive that I also bought on E-Bay which currently holds Windows 98.

In the Microsoft world, I have 15 or so years of experience and swapping a hard drive is simple. I know that it has to be nearly as simple on an iMac as it is on a Windoze machine.

I have a iMac G3 tray loader and would like to transfer every bit and byte from the 6 GB drive to the 20. Reinstalling is not an option because this machine did not come with any discs of any kind, so what is on the drive is what is there. There are several applications that I don't want to lose because this is going to be used for a youngster and many of the existing files will be great for this bigger drive.

I bought 9.2.2 upgrade discs from E-Bay, and I think the current system is 9.0.x or so, so once those discs arrive I can do an upgrade. I checked the Apple Support page and if I read this properly the highest OS that the iMac will support is 9.2.2. I looked at Bombich's Carbon Copy, but, it does not appear to work with lower versions of OS 10.x.x.

So, I would really appreciate this fine bunch of folk around here to steer me in the right direction. I am not afraid to get my hands dirty on the innards of the iMac, I have had it apart several times already to see the insides, upgrade the RAM, including the bottom of the CPU Daughtercard, so, any assistance will be greatly appreciated.

I would also like to do something with the CD-ROM if possible, like installing a CD-RW if there is a way to do the surgery and have things work.

Thanks in advance for any help for this Macintosh Newbie.

[Krusty]

Looks like SilverKeeper will do it though I have no personal experience with it. It appears that for this to work, you'll have to upgrade to 9.2.2 first.
http://www.atpm.com/10.05/cloning.shtml

[iDaver]

Sounds like you have a rev C or rev D iMac. Is the 20GB drive you bought in a working enclosure? If so, hopes would be that you can connect it via USB and just copy all of the contents from the iMac to the new drive. OS 9 does not require any kind of special "installation" like OS X, so you need only copy the entire contents of the drive and it will boot just fine. You will have to format the new drive before doing so.

[Geezus_Aach]

see my specs below in my sig for my 400mhz tangerine imac...

i too come from a pc world. changing out the harddrive for a 60gb 7200rpm was just as easy as swapping out in a pc. oh, and 1gb or ram helps alot.

i would look into getting a usb or firewire cd/DVD burner...