Can I boot from my old hard drive?

[st004rt]

I lost the power supply on my power mac G4 (digital audio). There are a few sights that sell new, re-con, 2nd hand and so on. Trouble is it seems to be a minefield to find which one is suitable for my 733Mhz desktop. The price is another problem and find that I could get a 2nd hand G4 for the price of a re-con psu although the thing could pack up after a few sessions, but it's something i'll live with if it happens.
Anyway the reason for this post is that I've seen a reasonable Power Mac G4 MDD without software or discs, Can I install the hard drive from my Digital Audio running OS 10.4.? into the MDD G4 as the master and be able to boot up without any problems.
Thanks

 

[Fishrrman]

"...the reason for this post is that I've seen a reasonable Power Mac G4 MDD without software or discs, Can I install the hard drive from my Digital Audio running OS 10.4.? into the MDD G4 as the master and be able to boot up without any problems."

I'm going to reckon, that YES - you can do just this. OS 10.4 runs fine on my own g4/MDD.

The worst-case scenario that I can think of is that you put the drive in and it won't boot from it.

Well, ok. But the MDD's have no less than FOUR hard drive bays.

I'm going to guess that the MDD that you're looking at already has a hard drive installed. It may even have a good version of OS X on it.

In that case, either boot from the already installed drive that comes with the g4, and you will still be able to "get at" your data on the old drive (once you install the old one into one of the empty drive bays).

Or.... install a "fresh" version of 10.4 to the new internal drive (not your old one), update it to 10.4.11, and then use Migration Assistant to import your user accounts, apps and data from the old drive to the newer one.

Migrating upwards a little from a Digital Audio to an MDD will be a pleasant trip, I'd think....

 

[st004rt]

Thanks Fishrrman for your reply. My concern is that I don't know if there is an OS installed on the MDD mac. If there isn't I wondered if I could boot from my hard drive.