Mac OS 8 vs. Mac OS 9 for an iMac G3

[Luigi239]

Hello all, I have just bought an iMac g3 333mhz with 64mb of ram. (I do plan on upgrading the ram, but not for a few months until I can get the money) Right now, it has OS 8 installed on it, but I also have a retail CD of OS 9. Should I upgrade to OS 9? Will I notice any performance hits? Is there a way to back up my OS 8 partition in case something goes wrong, as I don't have the original install CD for it.

Thanks alot!

 

[jwdawso]

I liked OS 9 a lot more than OS 8, so I would upgrade. There really would be no performance difference. As far as backing up, you could connect an external drive via USB, format it, and then use (I think) Disk Copy and Apple Software Restore. Disk Copy to create an image of your current disk and save it on the external disk. Then upgrade to OS 9. If there is some problem, then boot off the CD, and use Apple Software Restore to restore the image on the external disk to the internal disk.

It's also possible to boot off the external usb drive - I've been able to do that with a Tangerine iBook, that does not have firewire. So if you just dragged everything to the external drive, you might be able to re-boot with the option key down, and be able to select the external drive. I doubt that will work though.

Good luck!

 

[Queso]

That's a dilemma. I truly believe 8.6 was the pinnacle of the old MacOS, but 9.0.4 and above have such superior USB handling it complicates the decision.

Personally in your position I'd probably stick with 8. No point messing until you have to.