[ClaraT]

I would like to save the contents of the hard drive on my old iMac G3, 333Mhz, 6GB. Can I remove the hard drive and use it as an external hard drive? And if so, since it was running 8.6 will it work if I plug it into my Macbook running 10.5.8?

I parked this machine about seven years ago and today I decided to plug it in and check it out. Surprisingly it turned on and it was 1999 again. I looked at a bunch of old emails and documents. Fascinating.

While searching on this subject I see that many of you have upgraded these machines and I would be interested in hearing your suggestions as to how to use it now. I was planning to remove the hard drive and donate the hardware, but now I'm curious about what else I could do with it.

But mostly I want to save what's on the hard drive, so I would appreciate some instructions regarding this.

Thanks.

[macaddict0001]

You won't just be able to plug it in to your macbook. The easiest way to do things would probably be to set up a network between the two machines. Alternatively if your iMac has Firewire, Firewire target disk mode is a fantastic method of retrieving things. I would recommend against removing the hard drive though. It a PITA to open CRT imac cases without breaking the grey plastic underneath, there are inherent dangers regarding CRT's and if your attention span is anything like most peoples you probably won't bother putting it back together. Additionally you will need an enclosure for the hard drive Any ATA enclosure should work for that hard drive though.

[ClaraT]

I would rather donate the machine and just keep some of my old emails and documents (i.e. Quicken 98, Word 98) before wiping the hard drive clean. Since these were created in 8.6 I'm guessing I can not get them to open in OSX if I were to copy them to a CD or USB stick--is that correct?

Even if I did keep the HD and put it in an enclosure, as I understand you, it wouldn't work on my macbook. What would be the point of putting it in an enclosure then?

Thanks for your ideas. Very helpful.

[Big Mac]

1. Whether or not you could open your files depends on what format you save them in. Quicken is annoying and poorly programmed, so you may well have trouble with old Quicken files, but theoretically Quicken should be able to open old Quicken files. Old mail files saved as RTF or plain text are openable by any word processor, but if you save them in the native/proprietary mail client format (say for example, Outlook Express) you may have trouble finding an app to open them with.

2. Your MacBook shouldn't have a problem reading the old drive. It's HFS - Mac OS X would be truly pathetic if it couldn't read its own native filesystem! You wouldn't be able to run old applications because there's no support for Classic, but your files would be readable.

[-Q-]

Originally Posted by ClaraT 

Since these were created in 8.6 I'm guessing I can not get them to open in OSX if I were to copy them to a CD or USB stick--is that correct?

If you have an OS X-native version of the applications used to create the files, they should open just fine.

Even if I did keep the HD and put it in an enclosure, as I understand you, it wouldn't work on my macbook. What would be the point of putting it in an enclosure then?

Well, it wouldn't boot the machine for sure, but I'd imagine so long as it's still a mac-formatted disk, you should still be able to read the files. Might not be able to write to that hard drive until you reformatted it, but it should allow you to copy the files from the external drive to the internal one running OS X.

Probably better to try it via the thumb drive/burned CD method.

[Big Mac]

Sure you'd be able to write to it - it's HFS, probably HFS+. Assuming it successfully mounts there would be full read/write access.

[ClaraT]

-Q- You said, "If you have an OS X-native version of the applications used to create the files, they should open just fine."

Sorry, don't understand what you mean by "OS X-native version". The files were created in apps that ran on 8.6 back in 1999-2000. Could you please explain further?

[-Q-]

I mean that a newer version of the application, if it exists and designed to run on OS X, should be able to open your files.

So, for example, your Excel spreadsheets or Word documents created in Office 98 should open just fine in Office 2004 or 2008. As mentioned by Big Mac, there may be some problems where a new version of a program won't actually open an older file, but in most cases that should be a rare occurrence. There may also be cases where the application was just abandoned and never made the jump to OS X. Depending on what the file type is, you may or may not be able to open it with a completely different program.

[ClaraT]

Wonderful!

Thank you so much for clarifying and taking the time to do so.

Love this community.