G4 iMac Mod: is this possible

[Souljas]

Hi, i am preparing to installl a 160gb HD into my iMac g4 800mhz. However i connot straight swap my hard drives because the orignal one has alot of 55gb of video, music, and data files that I need to transfer to the new one. I do not have an external hard drive, and lack the money to buy a FW400 enclosure for the old HD.

1) do you think that i should, or if it possible to take out the current DVD-R drive and temorarily have it is a seconday hard drive. So therefore i could install the new OS10.3 into my new blank HD and then possible transfer all the data from the the old HD???

2) do i have another possibliy?

3) If you know how the inner parts of the iMac look you will see that the HD and DVD drive are held in an enclosure. If i was to take out the DVD drive there world be no real place and holding for the new HD. therefore do you think that I could temporariy have the HD ouside of the dome coming through the DVD drive hole???>will this damage my old HD?



Many thanks
any advice welcome ( i tried to explain the situation as good as possible!)

Souljas

 

[Finiksa]

1) do you think that i should, or if it possible to take out the current DVD-R drive and temorarily have it is a seconday hard drive.

I think this is probably the easiest solution for what you need to do, just remember to set the jumpers correctly before you reassemble the iMac.

3) If you know how the inner parts of the iMac look you will see that the HD and DVD drive are held in an enclosure. If i was to take out the DVD drive there world be no real place and holding for the new HD. therefore do you think that I could temporariy have the HD ouside of the dome coming through the DVD drive hole???>will this damage my old HD?

I wouldn't leave the hard drive hanging outside the case, I doubt the IDE and power cables would reach that far anyway.

Just get some 3.5"->5.25" drive mounting rails like this or this, you should be able to pick them up from most PC computer stores.

And remember to pick up some thermal paste also, you'll need it each time you reassemble the iMac.

 

[Sun Baked]

You'd have to take the machine apart and then put it all back together before you turn it back on -- including putting the thermal past and pads back.

Running one of these machines open and you risk watching the machine die as the parts heat up and burn up.

Quite a bit of work.

 

[Souljas]

thanks man that was very useful, do you know how to configure the jumpers corretly ( sorry in a bit of an internal novice ), thx

+ and also is it possible to import users from the old HD so that i dont have to do any configuring, and change all the settings, backgrouds etc, many thanks

 

[Finiksa]

thanks man that was very useful, do you know how to configure the jumpers corretly ( sorry in a bit of an internal novice ), thx

I'm not sure how the current drives are set up in the iMac, but it's probably Hard Drive set to Primary and Optical Drive set to Secondary. Just look at the labels on the drives they'll show a diagram on how to set the jumper pins.

+ and also is it possible to import users from the old HD so that i dont have to do any configuring, and change all the settings, backgrouds etc, many thanks

I'd recommend using Carbon Copy Cloner to clone your current installation on to the new drive. You won't have to reinstall OS X, it'll be just like using your old installation because… well… you are. Just remember to partition the new drive before you clone it, assuming you want more than one partition.

 

[Finiksa]

Also, if you're a hardware novice I'd research the take apart of the iMac fully before you do it. It's not an easy procedure at all, Xlr8yourmac have a good guide here I'd also recommend downloading the Apple take apart manual from here (if you haven't already) and read it throughly.

If you're going to the trouble of disassembling the iMac it's probably a good time to upgrade the RAM in the internal slot too, if you can afford it, since you won't want to be disassembling it too often.

 

[Souljas]

Also, if you're a hardware novice I'd research the take apart of the iMac fully before you do it. It's not an easy procedure at all, Xlr8yourmac have a good guide here I'd also recommend downloading the Apple take apart manual from here (if you haven't already) and read it throughly.

If you're going to the trouble of disassembling the iMac it's probably a good time to upgrade the RAM in the internal slot too, if you can afford it, since you won't want to be disassembling it too often.

thanks man, also another question ( ) when i have both HD's in the computer do i set my new 160gb as the SECONDARY drive and my 60gb as the PRIMARY drive, or the other way around?

 

[Finiksa]

thanks man, also another question ( ) when i have both HD's in the computer do i set my new 160gb as the SECONDARY drive and my 60gb as the PRIMARY drive, or the other way around?

You're welcome.

When you have both of them in (for the cloning) leave the original 60GB drive where it is with its current jumper settings, probably Primary(Master). Set the new 160GB drive to whatever the SuperDrive is currently set as, probably Secondary(Slave).

Then when you're done cloning remove the old 60GB drive, install the new 160GB drive in its place setting the jumpers to whatever the old 60Gb was set as and put the SuperDrive back.

Essentially whatever device is attached to the very end of the IDE cable needs to be set as Primary, the device on the middle connector needs to be Secondary.

Remember to clean off and reapply thermal paste every time you open the case, don't just add more.

 

[osprey76]

It might be easier to just buy an external Firewire or USB enclosure. Then you could continue to use the old drive for whatever you care to.

 

[MoparShaha]

It might be easier to just buy an external Firewire or USB enclosure. Then you could continue to use the old drive for whatever you care to.

I tend to agree. Normally I'm pretty gung-ho when it comes to things like this, but in this case I'd be careful. The flat-panel iMac is a highly-engineered computer in terms of heat dissapation. Taking it apart and switching out parts isn't a great idea (even temporarily). Just get the FireWire drive, you can find them for $50. Cheap insurance, plus you'll get to use your old drive.

 

[Le Big Mac]

It might be easier to just buy an external Firewire or USB enclosure. Then you could continue to use the old drive for whatever you care to.

Yeah, it seems like any added cost is well worth it, considering the hassle and risk of ruining the rest of the machine. With FW, is there much disadvantage to having the drive be external rather than directly connected internally, other than you take up a FW port (which is probably replicated on the back of the ext. HD anyway)?

 

[osprey76]

With FW, is there much disadvantage to having the drive be external rather than directly connected internally, other than you take up a FW port (which is probably replicated on the back of the ext. HD anyway)?

It depends on what you are doing with the drive. If it's an archive that gets relatively little activity, then there is little disadvantage. If you are running hardcore disk activity (like Photoshop or something similar) then you'll see a difference. I have an external FW drive and it does well and the computer can even boot quickly on it (a Gigabit machine with a 2x1300 MHz processor upgrade).

For a bit more information, look at Bare Feats.

 

[Macmaniac]

A gentle reminder for those of you who breach the snowy dome:
If thou shalt open thou shalt reassemble and replace thermal paste, or thou shalt have fire and burning

 

[Souljas]

I would have bought a external drive, but i got the 160gb at a good price. I actually opened it today just to get a feel for the inner workings, and actually found it relatively easy . well actually i almost had a heart attack when i started it up again because the mac HD 'question mark' came up telling me that it couldnt recognise and hard drives, but thank god when i opned it i hadnt pushed in the IDE cable properly