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Toyface19

macrumors member
Original poster
Dec 14, 2018
37
46
Derbyshire
Hi all,

Have a new HDD on the way for my 1.67 Ghz Powerbook G4 17-inch, and I am looking to keep all of the tweaks and applications I've set up intact. I have Mac OS X Leopard installed and nothing else on the drive. I would usually just do a DD command on my Mac Pro (I have known working IDE to USB controllers I can use) to make an image and then restore that image to the new drive. Would I be better off doing this, or using the Time Machine feature built in to OS X 10.5.8?

I was planning to DD the image to disk, then DD the image to the new drive, put the old girl back together and then reboot. Would that work for old OS X or am I better off using Time Machine?

Thanks all!
 

eyoungren

macrumors Penryn
Aug 31, 2011
29,604
28,366
Hi all,

Have a new HDD on the way for my 1.67 Ghz Powerbook G4 17-inch, and I am looking to keep all of the tweaks and applications I've set up intact. I have Mac OS X Leopard installed and nothing else on the drive. I would usually just do a DD command on my Mac Pro (I have known working IDE to USB controllers I can use) to make an image and then restore that image to the new drive. Would I be better off doing this, or using the Time Machine feature built in to OS X 10.5.8?

I was planning to DD the image to disk, then DD the image to the new drive, put the old girl back together and then reboot. Would that work for old OS X or am I better off using Time Machine?

Thanks all!
I do something similar, only I use Carbon Copy Cloner. What I do is is connect the source to one of my Mac's via TDM (Target Disk Mode) and then use CCC to clone to a disk image. Once I get the new drive, I install it, then connect via TDM again and use CCC to clone from the disk image back to the new drive.

Works pretty well for me.
 

Toyface19

macrumors member
Original poster
Dec 14, 2018
37
46
Derbyshire
I do something similar, only I use Carbon Copy Cloner. What I do is is connect the source to one of my Mac's via TDM (Target Disk Mode) and then use CCC to clone to a disk image. Once I get the new drive, I install it, then connect via TDM again and use CCC to clone from the disk image back to the new drive.

Works pretty well for me.

That sounds like a similar process to mine, although I bet Target Disk over firewire is much, much quicker but alas I have zero firewire cables as I didn't grow up with Macs and haven't got round to buying in. I guess i could still use CCC with an external drive, but I'm happy to know that the cloning at least work and will still boot etc
 
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Toyface19

macrumors member
Original poster
Dec 14, 2018
37
46
Derbyshire
I personally would use an external hd enclosure to put the new drive in. Then boot a 10.4 or 10.5 install CD and use disk utility to clone your existing drive to the new disk in the external enclosure. Once its done cloning, power down, then swap in your new drive.

Cheers

Took me a couple of reads to figure that one out, d'oh. I can boot the PowerBook from USB, have the enclosure plugged in another drive and just get the PowerBook to do it and save myself some time! only thing is though, how much quicker is my Mac Pro going to be cloning than an old girl like my PB?
 

eyoungren

macrumors Penryn
Aug 31, 2011
29,604
28,366
That sounds like a similar process to mine, although I bet Target Disk over firewire is much, much quicker but alas I have zero firewire cables as I didn't grow up with Macs and haven't got round to buying in. I guess i could still use CCC with an external drive, but I'm happy to know that the cloning at least work and will still boot etc
A major reason I use CCC is because it takes care of all the symlinking and hard drive folder blessing stuff. When it comes to this particular procedure though, I go an extra step and do a block-level clone. That makes sure everything is taken care of.
 

Toyface19

macrumors member
Original poster
Dec 14, 2018
37
46
Derbyshire
A major reason I use CCC is because it takes care of all the symlinking and hard drive folder blessing stuff. When it comes to this particular procedure though, I go an extra step and do a block-level clone. That makes sure everything is taken care of.

That's great thanks for your help, I have an old version of CCC installed from their website, and I've got a USB to IDE adapter I can use to clone the drive. I much prefer to clone a drive as it saves me a lot of time redoing all the installs and tweaks I've already done.

Cheers,
 

AshleyPomeroy

macrumors member
Dec 27, 2018
91
179
England
On the other hand I did essentially the same upgrade with Time Machine and the Migration Assistant, and it seemed to work fine albeit that I didn't have all that much installed on it:
https://women-and-dreams.blogspot.com/2018/09/upgrading-powerbook-g4-with-ssd.html

Quoting myself, "I used Time Machine to back up all my settings to an external drive. I then installed the MSATA drive, installed OS X (from a USB stick, using this handy guide), updated OS X until there were no more updates, and then used OS X's Migration Assistant to transfer my settings and applications from the external drive to the MSATA SSD.

Ordinarily I'm wary of using an operating system's built-in backup and data migration tools, perhaps because I grew up with Windows. I'm a Norton Ghost and latterly Macrium Reflect man. But OS X's combination of Time Machine and Migration Assistant worked flawlessly."

Albeit that QuickTime didn't transfer over and it lost CS2's licence information, but neither of those problems were insurmountable. It's a shame Time Machine wasn't developed in time for 10.4, it's one of the few genuinely good new things in 10.5.
 

Toyface19

macrumors member
Original poster
Dec 14, 2018
37
46
Derbyshire
So far, I’m having a bit of a nightmare to get this to work. I downloaded CCC for both my PB running 10.5.8 and also on my Mac Pro for Catalina. I tried plugging my new drive in to my PB via USB but it wasn’t getting enough power or SOMETHING as it was just clicking and not showing up, it works fine in the Mac Pro, so I took the PB apart and put the old drive in to my Mac Pro, made an image with CCC and then restored to the new drive, the PowerBook refuses to boot to it. So now I’m waiting for a classic DD command to make an image of my old 60GB drive to them try a restore to the 160GB new drive. I did try for a block level clone but I could not get the option to appear for whatever reason.

I think what’s gone wrong is that in order to let me restore to the new drive I was forced to format said drive as GUID map which of course isn’t supported by PowerMacs, hoping the DD image will allow me to DD restore byte-for-byte, just need to let it finish.
 

Amethyst1

macrumors G3
Oct 28, 2015
9,792
12,196
This is why I use a Firewire enclosure and do the cloning (usually using SuperDuper! or Disk Utility) on the PPC Mac itself. :)
 

Toyface19

macrumors member
Original poster
Dec 14, 2018
37
46
Derbyshire
This is why I use a Firewire enclosure and do the cloning (usually using SuperDuper! or Disk Utility) on the PPC Mac itself. :)

yeah, I don’t have any FireWire cables or enclosures otherwise I would have done,the USB adapter won’t work on the PPC Mac so I tried on my Mac Pro, I’m hoping the OG DD method works
 

Amethyst1

macrumors G3
Oct 28, 2015
9,792
12,196
Does your USB adapter come with an Y-style cable that occupies two USB ports to supply more power? If so it's worth giving a shot, although the ports being on opposite sides of the PB (who thought this was a good idea???) might make plugging that in difficult.
 

Toyface19

macrumors member
Original poster
Dec 14, 2018
37
46
Derbyshire
Does your USB adapter come with an Y-style cable that occupies two USB ports to supply more power? If so it's worth giving a shot, although the ports being on opposite sides of the PB (who thought this was a good idea???) might make plugging that in difficult.

it did not, and I don’t have a 4 pin Miles adapter for my other bigger ide caddy. I’ve got the 10.4 DVD running on the PowerBook and it likes the new drive, says it’s bootable etc, but the PowerBook will not boot to it I just get the question mark. I think the DD image will solve any issues as it will do a byte for byte clone regardless of table or partitioning but just need to wait.
 

eyoungren

macrumors Penryn
Aug 31, 2011
29,604
28,366
Yeah, it's most likely the GUID thing. Past a certain OS, Disk Utility started removing options. I imagine by Catalina the option to format APM is gone.

I'm wondering if perhaps a VM might work here (on the Mac running Catalina). I know that Parallels allows you to install OS X 10.5 Server.
 

Toyface19

macrumors member
Original poster
Dec 14, 2018
37
46
Derbyshire
Yeah, it's most likely the GUID thing. Past a certain OS, Disk Utility started removing options. I imagine by Catalina the option to format APM is gone.

I'm wondering if perhaps a VM might work here (on the Mac running Catalina). I know that Parallels allows you to install OS X 10.5 Server.

My third attempt was to make an image using SuperDuper of the old 60GB drive, format the new 160GB drive with DiskUtility as APM (which Catalina allowed me to do) and then use DD to restore said image to newly formatted APM drive. I was going to just use SuperDuper but it clearly does not like APM as it keeps crashing on me but DD has been progressing nicely.
 
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Toyface19

macrumors member
Original poster
Dec 14, 2018
37
46
Derbyshire
Well, that didn’t work either. This really should not be this difficult. I have successfully cloned drives in the past so do not know what the issue is. Will have to try my powered IDE caddy at work tomorrow and do it directly from the PowerBook itself, hopefully it works that way, as I cannot get it to boot from a restored drive using my Mac Pro, regardless of my last attempt restoring to an APM formatted disk
 

Amethyst1

macrumors G3
Oct 28, 2015
9,792
12,196
Can you attach both the old and the new disk to the Mac Pro, boot from, say, a Snow Leopard DVD (can also be a grey disc) and use Disk Utility's Restore feature?
 

Toyface19

macrumors member
Original poster
Dec 14, 2018
37
46
Derbyshire
45F65D42-02A4-4061-A4E6-3B096D038E7F.jpeg

My last ditch effort for tonight is to - use an old version of CCC running on the Book itself on the old 60GB drive, cloning to a 64GB USB stick, and then I’m going to try running Disk Utility from a 10.4 DVD to restore to the newly internal 160GB drive. Have no idea if this will work, but the “joy” of cloning disks is I can leave them running while I sit down and have a G & T

cheers
 
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alex_free

macrumors 65816
Feb 24, 2020
1,091
2,332
View attachment 946927
My last ditch effort for tonight is to - use an old version of CCC running on the Book itself on the old 60GB drive, cloning to a 64GB USB stick, and then I’m going to try running Disk Utility from a 10.4 DVD to restore to the newly internal 160GB drive. Have no idea if this will work, but the “joy” of cloning disks is I can leave them running while I sit down and have a G & T

cheers

Just want to chime in on my approach. If I’m backing up a Mac the only thing I’d do is create a dmg of the bootable volume using disk utility. You can then scan the dmg for restore and restore it to a partition in the future.

Ive previously made DMGs of freshly installed Mac OS X versions so that I can skip all the installation stuff. Instead I can restore the image of the newly installed OS to a partition.

You can even do this from a boot CD/DVD if you have a usb drive. Boot the disk, scan a bootable dmg from a usb drive, restore the bootable dmg from the usb drive, and then reboot into that partition. This way you’ll be at the intro part of the install when booting the newly restored partition instead of waiting who knows how long during a real install from the optical drive.
 

Toyface19

macrumors member
Original poster
Dec 14, 2018
37
46
Derbyshire
So, that worked PERFECTLY! Was really quite painless too actually. I think the lesson I learnt here was don’t try to do something with software many years newer than your end destination.

in the end using CCC on Leopard to make a correct clone, and then using Disk Utility from an installer disc to restore from the USB stick to the new larger drive worked perfectly. As always, the cloning was the big time sink, the restore took hardly any time at all! I initially wanted to use my Mac Pro as I thought it would make the whole process much quicker, how wrong I was in that endeavour!

Thanks all for your help, now I can enjoy a marginally quicker PowerBook and more space than I’ll probably know what to do with on a curiosity machine like this!

cheers!
 

bobesch

macrumors 68020
Oct 21, 2015
2,142
2,220
Kiel, Germany
Sorry, this suggestion comes pretty late ...
My usual procedure if I'm going to swap a drive, is:
1) Connect the new drive within an external USB-Case to the Powerbook
2) Run CCC or SuperDuper! on the Powerbook and
3) Clone the internal drive to the attached external USB-drive
4) Boot from the external USB-drive to check, the cloned drive is working.
5) Swap drives and use the previously internal drive as a backup drive within the external USB-case.
 

Toyface19

macrumors member
Original poster
Dec 14, 2018
37
46
Derbyshire
Sorry, this suggestion comes pretty late ...
My usual procedure if I'm going to swap a drive, is:
1) Connect the new drive within an external USB-Case to the Powerbook
2) Run CCC or SuperDuper! on the Powerbook and
3) Clone the internal drive to the attached external USB-drive
4) Boot from the external USB-drive to check, the cloned drive is working.
5) Swap drives and use the previously internal drive as a backup drive within the external USB-case.

Yepp, this is what I should have started with, but my USB SATA to IDE connector didn't get enough power to work on the PowerBook, sadly. So I added an extra step and used a USB stick, worked well in the end lol
 
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Toyface19

macrumors member
Original poster
Dec 14, 2018
37
46
Derbyshire
You should have tried booting from the USB stick for the LOLs :)

I'm sure it would have actually worked, seeing as I can boot both Tiger and Leopard installers from USB, but the performance would be woefully slow, in fact, I might try it later lol
 
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