Salvaging a G4's HDD

[Gremmy]

I've got a PowerMac G4 (M8570) that is on its last legs. I'd like to remove its hard drive, drop the drive into an IDE enclosure, and use it as an external drive (via USB) for a modern Mac. Anyone know if this will work?

I don't know if OS X's file system on the G4 will be readable and I don't know if it's as simple as dropping the IDE drive into a $17 enclosure like this one: https://www.amazon.com/3-5-IDE-HDD-Enclosure-Black/dp/B0018NEQFI

And there are probably other considerations I'm not even aware of!

(I looked for related topics in the forums but didn't find an answer. Sorry if I'm asking a common question for the billionth time.)

 

[swamprock]

It should work just fine. Modern Macs can read HFS format drives with APM (Apple Partition Map, the "old" PowerPC way of formatting bootable drives)...

 

[Gremmy]

Excellent - thanks for the info! In case it wasn't clear, after I put the G4's hard drive in the new enclosure, I want to be able to access the files on the drive from another Mac. My goal isn't to reuse the drive, rather it is to avoid losing those files.

Anyhow, what you're saying makes sense and I think I'm all set. Thanks again!

 

[jerwin]

see if you can find a usb 3.0 enclosure; usb 2.0 is still slower than UltraATA100. That is, if your modern mac is that modern.

 

[Gremmy]

Yup, good idea! This is for my dad's Mac Mini which has USB 3.0 ports.

 

[ZapNZs]

It will work just fine - however, how old is the drive? They tend to start seeing increased failure rates after the 5-ish year mark. It may be worth pulling all of the SMART metrics as an extra level of assurance on the drive's health before buying the enclosure? (just in case the drive is starting to fail, so you don't spend money on an enclosure you can't easily repurpose for the more common SATA drives.)