[indigoimac]

So, I'm in a bit of a bind and am wondering how well this solution would work.

A friend of mine has an iMac G4 (the 1.25GHz model) and their internal is completely full (and probably getting close to failure). It will be too difficult to guide the owner through swapping out the drive and I can't get out there to do it (and it's not worth paying someone to do it). So, has anyone here run a machine off an external firewire drive for an extended period of time? I have a rescue partition on an external just in case, but I have not run a machine off one day to day.

The machine only has fw400, but that should be a draw against the internal pata, and considering how old the current drive is there might even still be a boost, though not as good as swapping the internal.

I also have an issue buying a pata drive these days and since this may be an interim solution (probably a year or so) before replacing the machine, the external could move on over to the new machine as a backup time machine volume or whatever.

Thanks!

[seanc]

Should work fine, so long as it's a good quality enclosure and power supply.

People ran early Mini's off of Firewire hard drives because it was faster - no problems that I've heard of.

[indigoimac]

I forgot about people running minis that way -- instills a bit of confidence, haha.