Putting G5 Hardrive into Intel Mac

[Robbadore64]

Hi,

I've been on Macs for about 6 years now and am able to handle most things that come my way but was wondering if anyone had any advice on what I'm planning to do. A couple days ago my iMac G5 1.8 died horribly. I'm assuming the motherboard or something just died because all I can get out of it is the power light, then about a minute later the fans start running like crazy, no screen, nothing.

I'm not trying to fix it, I've had it three years and it has server it's purpose. So I just ordered a refurb base model Intel iMac. But what I'd like to do is use my old iMac's harddrive and just swap it into the new iMac. Basically, I don't want to go through all the setup etc, I've got my iPod and appleTV set up with this harddrive and I don't wish to start over.

I'm thinking once I put in the drive, I'll just boot to my leapord disc and go through upgrade mode? This is what I'm looking for advice on, any suggestions?

Worse case, I can run the smaller harddrive on the new iMac and just transfer everything over via external drive.

Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks.

 

[yg17]

I may be wrong, but I don't think it will be possible due to your current hard drive having the PPC version and your iMac being Intel. I don't think an upgrade will take care of that unfortunately.

 

[Scottyk9]

Agree with yg17

But you can use migration assistant - using this almost all settings are transferred over (including programs, settings with other equipment, etc.)


and do you really want to use a 3 year old hard drive as your primary?

 

[velocityg4]

Even doing the upgrade you are moving from a PowerPC OS to an x86 OS. Though it may possibly work I think you would be asking for a lot of trouble from your computer, possibly leftover drivers and other System files that are not compatible.

I think the hassle of reinstalling some programs, customizing the user interface and moving your files over would be much less work and far stabler than what you are considering. Also unless you had upgraded your G5's hard drive recently it will be much slower than your new Intel iMacs hard drive.

And on your G5 have you tried resetting your SMU?

 

[Robbadore64]

thanks

Thank you, I think I will just go with the newer drive. My only thing is I'd be going from 300 gig to 250 gigs. I know, it's only 50 gig but the space is important.

So do you think plugging in that old drive to a usb SATA enclosure I'd be able to transfer everything that easily? Last time I tried that was going from a live machine G4 and connecting that way.

And yeah, I've reset the internal SMS switch but could only get two of the 4 leds to lighten up, giving the same results.

Thanks for the advice!

Maybe I'll just go out and buy a 500 gig drive and start from scratch, it's time I upgraded that anyway.

 

[velocityg4]

Get a Firewire enclosure it will be faster than a USB 2.0 one. USB is not as efficient with sustained high speed data transfers.

This one is just Firewire 400.
While this one uses Firewire 800.
You can even have Firewire 800 and hold two hard drives with this.

 

[Makosuke]

So do you think plugging in that old drive to a usb SATA enclosure I'd be able to transfer everything that easily?

In general yes, it is just that easy--the Migration Assistant usually does its job quite well, and it won't need anything more than to see your previous drive connected in some way, which sticking it in a USB or Firewire case will do.

That said, I probably would only use it to transfer users and their data, not the applications--depending on what apps you've got installed (Adobe in particular) you could theoretically have trouble down the line from a direct migration. Basically it seems worth it to take the opportunity to just install the latest versions of everything you use so (in addition to the slightly reduced chance of problems) you're sure you have the latest version.

This is particularly important in going from a PPC Mac to an Intel one--if there is an Intel native version of something that you hadn't updated before, it'll run faster with the native one.

Same goes for QT plugins and browser plugins--some have separate native versions, so a migration wouldn't do you any good anyway. Installing a clean, up-to-date copy of Flash, Flip4Mac, etc is probably a good idea regardless.