[baddaawg]

hi all. Will an iMac G5 (iSight) HD put into an external enclosure and then hooked up to a Mac Mini G4 work? the imac hd was pulled from my imac that has a fried logic board (according to the local mac repair shop). so, of course, it has the os on it, all my files, etc. i am going to put it in an enclosure that has usb 2.0 and hook it up to the mini and then take out all the files i need, wipe it clean, etc. and use as an external drive.

to make a long story longer, will the os on the hd interfere with the mac mini?

[adamfishercox]

it should... once you get the HD hooked up to the mini,wipe it clean, because you don't need the OS on that drive unless you plan to boot from it.

[Waragainstsleep]

Still never tried to boot a Mac from USB but PPC ones won't do it for sure. The OS will not interfere with the mini at all. Even if its bootable, you will have to tell it to boot from it.

[mduell]

Yes, you can use a USB external drive for storage. Any OS installed on a USB drive won't be an issue since PPC Macs can't boot from USB. With a Firewire enclosure you could even boot from the external.