Old OS10.2.8

I'm not aware of any hard drive that requires OS 10.5.

You didn't say what model your G4 was, but I'd guess it is just an IDE hard drive (they're called PATA drives now).

I know some of the older macs have a hard time with "BIG" hard drives (bigger than 120 GB) so your upgrade choices would be limited, but you do have options.

Depending on your specs (CPU speed and RAM) you can go up to 10.5.

To back your files up, you can use firewire or usb hard drives.
Just plug in an external drive big enough and you can copy your iPhoto library to it.

Why do you say that most of the programs on it will no longer work?
Are you referring to Classic Applications? They can work on 10.4.

 

Download the Jaguar verion of Carbon Copy Cloner and use it. Easily the best solution for backup in Mac OS X.

http://www.bombich.com/download.html

 

SuperDuper is way better-- I've had issues with bootable copies using Carbon Copy Cloner -- none with SuperDuper

 

I'm aware of the key-command differences. What I'm saying is that you can't cut and paste between Open Office and regular Mac Apps. Try it. It doesn't work. Not very convenient, if, say, you're doing research on the Web and want to incorporate it into your documents.

 

More than likely if the tech specs for the drive state it only works in 10.5 then it'll only work in 10.5 - possibly because it's been partitioned with one of the newer partition schemes only Leopard recognises. Unless you actually tell us the make and model of the drive you want to get (and logically I'm assuming you mean an external drive), and also exactly what G4 you have then no one's going to be able to give you much of a straight answer.

Picking any old solution out of thin air though I'd say get hold of some Leopard install discs and perform an Archive & Install, which saves the existing system and software but installs a clean version of Leopard for use on the Mac. Then the 1TB drive would more than likely work fine and you could then start shifting your data over to back it up and also see which programs will work. This solution however really does depend on what Mac you've got, but taking a stab in the dark if it's got 10.2 on it could be one of the old MDD models which I believe can support Leopard.