G4 Powerbook, HDD swap / external boot?

[666sheep]

10.3 or 10.5 disc should work too, all you need is boot from it to run Disk Utility. PMed you step by step.

[ghostly606]

Update:

I had to boot in open firmware and change start-up permissions but managed to boot through USB and clone my old drive in the end. Method for booting a USB drive (through online research, I am no expert!):

1. In DU click on volume and find out partition number by pressing “Info” (i.e. 3)
2. Boot holding Command+Option+O+F
3. Type dev / ls and take note of disk volume (i.e. /pci@f2000000/usb@1b/disk@1 in my case)
4. Type setenv boot-device /pci@f2000000/usb@1b/disk@1:3,\\:tbxi (where 3 is the partition number)
5. Type printenv boot-device and check boot device has changed from hd to /pci@f2000000/usb@1b/disk@1:3
6. Type mac-boot and cross fingers

Thanks all for your assistance!

[justperry]

Originally Posted by ghostly606

Update:

I had to boot in open firmware and change start-up permissions but managed to boot through USB and clone my old drive in the end. Method for booting a USB drive (through online research, I am no expert!):

1. In DU click on volume and find out partition number by pressing “Info” (i.e. 3)
2. Boot holding Command+Option+O+F
3. Type dev / ls and take note of disk volume (i.e. /pci@f2000000/usb@1b/disk@1 in my case)
4. Type setenv boot-device /pci@f2000000/usb@1b/disk@1:3,\\:tbxi (where 3 is the partition number)
5. Type printenv boot-device and check boot device has changed from hd to /pci@f2000000/usb@1b/disk@1:3
6. Type mac-boot and cross fingers

Thanks all for your assistance!

Nice, good you got it to boot of USB.

Somewhat related, I used the setenv command in OF to set verbose mode, got an error- setenv command not found-WTF