Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

G5 and MacPro hard drive swap and display problem

M

monkeymissile

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 16, 2009
9
0
Hi Folks,
Hoping someone can help me figure this out. I swapped HDDs between a G5 and MacPro this morning. The MacPro was connected to a large LCD TV via HDMI for it's display (using a DVI to HDMI adapter) and it worked great for just scrolling images of our projects (no audio). When I put it's HDD in the G5 and connected it to the display the same way, I got nothing on the screen. Thinking it was a video card issue on the G5 end, I plugged in a different monitor and rebooted the G5. This time I got the flashing question mark folder meaning it couldn't find an OS to boot. So now I can't tell what the issue is. I thought HDDs between G5s and MacPros were the same? If not does this mean the older G5 drive won't work in the MacPro tower? (I haven't tried yet). Thanks in advance!
 
Could you have stripped out the PPC code on the MacPro disc?

That's the thing that comes first to mind.

Also, I am pretty sure you could boot off of your G5 disc and put everything you wanted to play in the MacPro drive's shared folder and access it like that.
 
The Mac Pro HD is using a GUID partition table in the standard configuration. The PPC machines use APT. You need to clone the Mac Pro disk content to a HD which is set up for APT.
 
Hi Guys, thanks for replying so quickly.
The MacPro disk doesn't have anything on it, could I just toast it and reinstall the OS? Will that fix the partition table problem and allow it to work in the G5?
How would I clone the G5 disk (the one that has all the data I want to save) so it would work in the Pro?
I tried using MIgration Assistant with firewire between the two but no go...
thanks again
 
Put both disks in the Mac Pro. Use disk utility from your boot drive or your Leopard install disk depending of what is available to you. Partition the empty drive for one partition with the GUID option. The you can use the clone function in disk utility (it is named restore or something) to copy the G5 system to your Mac Pro. You just pull the drive names into the boxes of the program.
 
gugucom said:
Put both disks in the Mac Pro. Use disk utility from your boot drive or your Leopard install disk depending of what is available to you. Partition the empty drive for one partition with the GUID option. The you can use the clone function in disk utility (it is named restore or something) to copy the G5 system to your Mac Pro. You just pull the drive names into the boxes of the program.
Click to expand...

ok, seems pretty straightforward. Then I should be able to erase the old G5 disk and reload OS X on it with the GUID setting
 
monkeymissile said:
ok, seems pretty straightforward. Then I should be able to erase the old G5 disk and reload OS X on it with the GUID setting
Click to expand...

any issue with the video card in the G5 driving the LCD display with DVI to HDMI adapter? Earlier research seemed to indicate no issue
 
monkeymissile said:
any issue with the video card in the G5 driving the LCD display with DVI to HDMI adapter? Earlier research seemed to indicate no issue
Click to expand...

There shouldn't be.

HDMI is just a single-link DVI channel with audio - of course audio can't be pulled with the adapter.
 
Dr.Pants said:
There shouldn't be.

HDMI is just a single-link DVI channel with audio - of course audio can't be pulled with the adapter.
Click to expand...

I'm ok with no audio in this case. Just wanted to make sure before I toasted the old G5 disk after cloning it to the MacPro disk.
Thanks!
 
gugucom said:
If you want to use it in the G5 it cannot have GUID. It must have APT. But I don't understand what you want to achieve here anyway.
Click to expand...

sorry, I should have clarified: I am swapping the G5 I use at home with a spare MacPro here at work, but need all the data from the old G5. I tried Migration Assistant but it didn't work so now I'm restoring the G5 disk onto the newly erased MacPro disk like you said. It's chugging along nicely.
I just realized that I don't have to do anything to the old G5 disk if the restore goes ok; i'll just pop it back into the G5 that's now here at work and create a new user account to run the slide show.
Sorry for the confusion!
 
The OS that was installed on your G5 won't work on the Mac Pro so cloning it to a GUID partitioned hard drive still won't work.

You have to reinstall the OS onto the Mac Pro with the original install CDs or with a Retail copy of the software.

You can install the G5 hard drive inside the Mac Pro but you won't be able to boot off it. Instead just drag and drop your files from one hard drive to the next.
 
so far, so good

well, after putting both the G5 drive and the MacPro drives into the spare bays on my work MacPro, I erased the MacPro drive and restored the G5 drive on to it. I am happy to be writing this from home using the restored drive so all seems to be good for now. Tomorrow I'm popping in a 500GB drive in here for TimeMachine.
Thanks for all your help everyone!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back