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jvanart · Oct 25, 2009, 08:40 PM

I currently have a G5 Dual 2ghz running 10.4.11. Clearly I need to upgrade and am looking at the Quad Mac Pro. At first I was pissed at the Ram ceiling, but now that I can get to 12gb I am ready to take the plunge. My question is, can I use my old 1 Tb sata drive that currently runs my system now and -- when I need to -- boot 10.4.11 from it in the Mac Pro? I am a Graphic Designer and have a lot of older software that I would rather not update, and some that I cannot that is still legit, like old websites I maintain that were built with GoLive, and an Epson Stylus Pro 4000 that they are not going to be making a driver for! If not, any suggestions? or am I screwed... --thanks in advance!

AKcrab · Oct 25, 2009, 08:53 PM

The G5 drive will be partitioned as Apple Partition, not GUID, so I don't think you'll be able to boot from it.

Eriamjh · Oct 25, 2009, 09:28 PM

Why not do a simple user-transfer from the old G5 to the new Mac pro (FW to FW using the Apple Migration Utility).
If the apps are universal, they will run. You will want to remove any PPC-specific control panels before the transfer.

If your apps are not universal, then your apps will still run under Rosetta and likely run at a reasonable speed, especially if you buy a newer Mac Pro.

jvanart · Oct 25, 2009, 10:09 PM

AKcrab: Thanks, I feared that...

Eriamjh: Thanks. But what about the Epson 4000 print drivers... That printer and GoLive are my only REAL concerns. Everything else is easily replaced...

I am going with the new Mac Pro, so I know that I will regret it come 2010 with the next upgrade. But I am used to that.

reader50 · Oct 25, 2009, 10:09 PM

Mac Pros will boot from an Apple Partition Map drive ... but it will not boot from your 10.4.11 drive. Tiger required a separate x86 install. You might be able to get a Leopard install to dual-boot - Apple does that with the Leopard install DVD. But that wasn't your question.

To answer your question, you can install the 1 TB drive in a spare bay of the MacPro. But you cannot boot from it.

I'd suggest Eriamjh's solution, give Migration Assistant a try. And if it doesn't work, keep your G5 available. For something mission-critical (and to preserve your software investment) keep the hardware that works as a fallback. Preferable to trying to explain to you client why you can no longer maintain their site.

jvanart · Oct 26, 2009, 01:01 AM

reader50: Thanks. Agreed. If all else fails, dropping an ethernet card into the printer for when it moves downstream will be the answer. There may be other outs too. I appreciate your input!!!

Eriamjh · Oct 26, 2009, 12:03 PM

The drivers should be fine as long as they are PPC and running under Rosetta.

If you buy a Mac Pro, you're committing yourself to making it work. Odds are it will work. Rosetta is pretty good.

jvanart · Oct 26, 2009, 03:53 PM

Eriamjh: Thanks a bunch. I may (painfully) stick it out for the next refresh in January. Hopefully it will not be a whole new ballgame by then...

shdwghst457 · Oct 27, 2009, 12:32 AM

yea, too bad you can't just run the Intel version of Tiger, if your apps needed Tiger for whatever reason. Any Intel Mac can boot off of a hard drive using APM or GUID, it's only PPC Macs that require APM. But Intel Tiger was very different from PPC Tiger and even if a Mac Pro could boot off of the PPC version, Tiger does not work on modern Macs. for instance, the unibody MacBook Pros can't even boot off of the 10.5.0 disc, they require 10.5.6 minimum. I'm fairly certain that most Macs can't boot off of anything older than what they ship with.

i agree with reader50, keep your G5. just leave it the way it is with the system drive in it. Switch to Intel/10.6 one piece at a time. Rather than trying to migrate from an old OS on an old machine, moving one app at a time will give you precise knowledge over what's going to act up and what isn't. it's how I would do it, anyway, especially if what I was using my computer for was actually critical to my clients.

Brien · Oct 27, 2009, 02:21 AM

I'd wait. Especially if the Mac Pro is going i9.

shdwghst457 · Oct 28, 2009, 04:50 AM

that would be sick. yes, i'll take a mac pro with dual i9 quad cores, 128GB of RAM, and 8 hard drive bays. hold the windows please.

jvanart · Oct 30, 2009, 10:34 AM

Awesome. Thanks everyone for the help. I think, for better or worse, I will wait for the 2010 updates. I am sure it will bring along its own set of new issues, but I am weary of being leapfrogged at the end of cycles. I'll just keep saving my pennies... and watching the pretty colored beach ball...

catalist8 · Nov 18, 2009, 10:38 PM

Hi everyone,

thanks for this helpful post , I am a brand new member these forums and also a brand new owner of a Mac Pro 2.66 Quad Core (bought it re-furbished).

I made the switch from my Powermac G5 Quad , due to one of the CPU's dying and the replacement cost being through the roof!

I had the computer delivered today and I put my old startup disk (with Tiger 10.4.8 installed) in the machine (which had a disc on it already with Tiger pre-installed as I requested), and I started the 'Migration' process so I can use my existing startup disc on the new machine.

Well, it is about 6 1/2 hours later since the process has begun , and the 'Transferring Information' window is still on the screen, with no status bar (there never was one to begin with). My drive had about 270 GB of data to copy, but I can't imagine it taking 6 hours!

I noticed in an earlier post someone mentions that Tiger does not work on modern Mac's, how accurate and specific is that information? Maybe that is the reason this process is not going smoothly? The only reason I wanted Tiger to stay as my OS was because I want to take things one step at a time with the upgrades and I may have some programs that will have issues running on Leopard.

Does anyone here have any experience with the PowerMac -> Mac Pro migration process?

Any ideas/suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

thanks.

mduell · Nov 19, 2009, 02:32 PM

Migration Assistant is a glacially slow piece of ...
Abort it and migrate your data yourself.

Spheric Harlot · Nov 19, 2009, 02:37 PM

A 2.66 quad will run off Tiger?

Simon · Nov 19, 2009, 04:33 PM

The original MP was a quad-core 2.66 GHz machine. It was released in August 2006. Leopard was released in October 2007. IOW the original MP should run Tiger just fine.

However, the current 2.66 GHz quad MP (launched March 2009) will definitely not run Tiger. Since you mention buying it refurbished I'm assuming it's the current model. And that would mean you can't run it on Tiger.

catalist8 · Nov 19, 2009, 06:37 PM

thanks for the fast replies everyone.

Turns out my machine is the August 2006 model so I will be able to run Tiger, which I am going to do for now because I have no reason to move up to Leopard. I definitely want to take things one step at a time, and since I am doing music production on this machine, there can always be unexpected things that happen when you upgrade to newer OS versions.

I am just going to bite the bullet and re-install what I need to myself... the migration was still 'Transferring' after 16 hours. I put the drive it was transferring from in the machine too, so it shouldn't have been so slow, but oh well.

Doc HM · Nov 22, 2009, 04:49 PM

Originally Posted by mduell

Migration Assistant is a glacially slow piece of ...
Abort it and migrate your data yourself.

No it's generally fast and reliable. Dragging tens of thousands of files over by hand. That's slow. I know, I've had to do it more times then I'd want to. Super long MA times normally mean errors in the old directory or media damage on the old drive.