Swap Backplane and CPU Tray AFTER OS Install?

[Jackp311]

Howdy

As my previous threads indicate, I have a Mac 4,1 enclosure for which I purchased a backplane and new CPU tray from a 5,1.

Can I install OSX fresh on this machine (on the new PCIe SSD I got) and then once I get the new parts, swap them in? Or... Will the OS "read" or utilize the information from either of these boards and effectively become no longer a "clean" install.

I want my first run at this to be a perfectly clean machine so I can have a fresh time machine "clean" backup.

Kind of like installing "drivers" on a windows PC, it gradually gets full or bogged down as different pieces of hardware are connected and/or replaced. (Sorry for the PC word!)

Thoughts?

Thanks in advance!

 

[ActionableMango]

There's no need to store a backup of that because you can just restore to that any time by doing another clean installation from the installer. So I don't really understand the purpose of backing up a perfectly clean initial installation, but maybe there's some use case I haven't thought of.

In any case, to answer your question, I don't think anything should change for two reasons:

1. The boards have identical hardware and so use identical drivers.
2. MacOS includes all drivers natively for all Apple hardware that the OS supports, so when you add or remove Apple supported hardware, you aren't downloading additional drivers. You could even connect your hard drive to a completely different Mac, for example a MacBook Pro, and if you booted it from there it's not going to download additional drivers.

 

[Jackp311]

Thanks for the info.

By "clean" I mean clean for me with my apps installed and setting etc. I guess that makes more sense.

Thanks!