Transfer iMac hard drive?

[Tiger-kai]

Hi,

I have an iMac G5 (the first using intel chips) and it went bang a month ago and has been in for repair but they are unable to fix it as they have wasted 4 power supply's trying already. However, I also have an identical iMac that is just spare, bought the exact same time, same model. As I have all my files, programs, OS, etc on the broken iMac. Would I be able to simply take the hard drive out of that iMac and swap it with the hard drive in the good iMac and simply turn it on and everything would be working as if it would just be my old mac? Photoshop, Illustrator, newer OSX, etc? As it will be a pain to reinstall everything and I also have files that were not backed up.
If so, do you think the hard drive could at all have been causing the iMac to short as I don't want to ruin my spare iMac also.

Thank you

 

[macthefork]

First, the G5 had the 970 PowerPC IBM processor. If you have an intel chip, you have a Intel iMac. Both iMac versions were sold in 2006. (the Intel version was released sometime in the first quarter of 2006 IIRC)

Rather than replace the HDD from the non functioning iMac into the one that's working, why not place it into an enclosure and clone it to the functioning HDD in the working iMac. That way, you'd have it as back-up if something went wrong. You can grab an external enclosure fairly inexpensively these days. You should also be able to boot from it, too, as an external. However, if it's on USB 2 or Firewire 400, it would be rather slow.

 

[Tiger-kai]

Thank you! that sounds great advice. Do you know of any tutorials anywhere that would guide me in cloning the drive? thanks again

 

[Tiger-kai]

Do you think this would do the trick?

http://www.amazon.co.uk/DIGIFLEX-Dr...91386434&sr=8-2&keywords=hard+drive+enclosure

thanks!

 

[macthefork]

That one is for a 2.5" drive. The 2006 iMac would have a 3.5 inch drive in it.

This enclosure is for a 3.5" drive, although, any USB 2 enclosure or caddy that would hold a 3.5" SATA drive should work. I haven't used that enclosure I linked above, but used it so show you one that should work.

 

[Tiger-kai]

Thanks for the advice. I have the HD in an enclosure now and can access everything ok. I have downloaded Super Duper and will try and clone everything across tonight. Hopefully it will work.

Do you know if everything would work perfectly? such as accessing Creative Suite (or other programs) or would I have to register or something.

Thank you!

 

[macthefork]

It depends on how different the iMacs are. I've cloned from one to a similar iMac without having to reauthorize CS when using the same OS. Other times, when upgrading to a new iMac with a newer OS I did have to renter the S/N for CS. Although, then I was using Migration assistant, and not cloning. This was for adobe CS on the computer, not the cloud version (that we don't use).

Never had any problems (that I can recall) with other programs that needed reauthorizing after cloning. But, even if you did, all you'd have to do is re-enter the S/Ns. Much easier than reinstalling each.