[GetSome681]

My recent stint into the PC world has left me forgetting quite a bit of Mac stuff. Basically, I want to know if a hard drive used in one mac can be taken out, placed in a different model mac, and still be able to boot that different model mac?

My problem: I currently have a imac 333mhz in my possession that has a dead CD-ROM drive (so I can't install os x). I'm going to be trying to look for a replacement, but in the meantime, I was curious if I could grab the hard drive out of there, throw it in my firewire enclosure, and install os x on it via my powerbook. Then the hard drive would go back in the imac and hopefully boot fine off it.

Thanks for the help. I don't want to waste the time to tear this imac apart to take out the hard drive if it's not even possible.

[mikesch1]

What you describe should work as, long as the OS X rev, that you install supports the imac, and concerning any imac of that age, I believe any os x revision will work.

Make sure the drive is jumpered correctly before reinserting it in the imac.

M

[GetSome681]

Originally posted by mikesch1:
What you describe should work as, long as the OS X rev, that you install supports the imac, and concerning any imac of that age, I believe any os x revision will work.

Make sure the drive is jumpered correctly before reinserting it in the imac.

M

Yeah, OS X had been installed previously, but I've since changed out the hard drive. Thanks for the help! Looks like I'll use this to get it booted while I try to find a replace cd-rom.

[piracy]

Actually, you don't even need to do that much.

Have a FireWire cable?

Then all you have to do is hold down the "T" key on the iMac at boot, and keep holding it until a yellow FireWire logo appears on a blue background. This mode is called "target disk mode". You can then hook it up to your PowerBook via a FireWire cable and it will act as an external hard drive (essentially, the iMac becomes a big FireWire enclosure). Then, you can boot off a Mac OS X CD on the PowerBook and install Mac OS X on the iMac's drive, or whatever else you need to do. When done, shut down the PowerBook, and then press and hold the power button on the iMac until it powers off. Unhook the FireWire cable. You're done. All without having to rip apart the iMac.

[Mr. Blur]

Originally posted by piracy:
Actually, you don't even need to do that much.

Have a FireWire cable?

Then all you have to do is hold down the "T" key on the iMac at boot, and keep holding it until a yellow FireWire logo appears on a blue background. This mode is called "target disk mode". You can then hook it up to your PowerBook via a FireWire cable and it will act as an external hard drive (essentially, the iMac becomes a big FireWire enclosure). Then, you can boot off a Mac OS X CD on the PowerBook and install Mac OS X on the iMac's drive, or whatever else you need to do. When done, shut down the PowerBook, and then press and hold the power button on the iMac until it powers off. Unhook the FireWire cable. You're done. All without having to rip apart the iMac.

only catch with that method is that the imac 333mhz didn't come with firewire.....

[piracy]

Originally posted by Mr. Blur:
only catch with that method is that the imac 333mhz didn't come with firewire.....

Oops; wasn't paying attention to the model. ;-)

[tooki]

There are some minor differences in installations (none of them serious enough to prevent booting), so the general rule is that you can move an OS X installation to a lower model, but not a higher one, and also that moving an install from a desktop to a laptop may be more problematic. Most of the problems are actually just preferences: the laptop problem is mainly that many things, such as the battery meter, will be obscured. Deleting all the preferences and caches should be enough to fix it, though!

In your case, I wouldn't envision any problems. Just remember one thing: on that model iMac, the partition containing the operating system must be completely contained within the first 8GB of the drive. So if the drive is bigger than 8GB, you must partition it. The OS X installer on the iMac will check for this limitation and not allow you to violate it, when running on the PowerBook it will not, and thus could leave you with a disk that cannot boot that iMac.

tooki

[Chris O'Brien]

On a mildly related subject:
I bought an 80gig maxtor hard drive to go in my rev A B&W G3 400MHz and I'm having a slight problem. There's only one IDE/ATA slot, so i took out the other drive (the main one I used all the time) and replaced it with the 80gig. I then installed panther and now whenever I try an boot the mac it crashes ("You need to restart your computer") straight away. I can sometimes get it to boot into safe mode, but sometimes whilst doing the safe boot it will just restart itself before getting to the login screen.

I booted it in verbose mode and it's failing at IOSCSI... Removing the SCSI card I have (for another hard drive in there) didn't help (I was desperate, so was trying anything).

Anyone got any ideas? When in safe mode I can copy files etc and use the hard drive fine, so it seems to me that there's something not set right for the system to boot properly - but what?

Cheers for any help.