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wheals

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 4, 2010
3
0
I just got a iMac G5 (pre iSight) and I'm trying to start it up holding down option while it's connected to a duplicate version of my MacBook's HD on an external firewire HD and it's not being able to boot from it . My Macbook works fine when I do this if I feel like trying something out on the external drive 1st .

The only thing I can think that's wrong is that the G5 & Intel HD's are not swappable . This could ruin my plans of putting a drive in the iMac the same size as my Macbook and simply copying over all the contents through restore w/ target disk mode .

Is that what I'm dealing w/ ? And if so does anyone know a way around it besides having to reinstall all my old programs and files into the G5 piece by piece ?

FYI : My intel MacBook is still running Tiger and that's what's on the iMac as well .

Sorry for the newbie post and I did try a search . Thanks .
 

ADent

macrumors 6502a
Sep 9, 2007
504
0
Tiger is not swappable between intel and PPC. Two different installs with two different installer disks.

Leopard is - though the default disk partitioning scheme is different.

IIRC PPC needs Apple partitioning (APM) and the intel defaults to Global (GUID), but intel will boot off of the Apple scheme.
 

wheals

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 4, 2010
3
0
Thank you for the quick reply .

If I install Leopard on both computers should I be able to use restore in disk utility to copy my MacBook's HD to the iMac in target disk mode and make it work ?
 

wheals

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 4, 2010
3
0
Couldnt you just boot the iMac in target disk mode and use like Superduper to clone the macbooks drive to the imac?

That's what I was planning on doing but now am not sure if I should attempt it when I can't boot it from an external drive that's a clone of my Macbook .
 
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