On 5 Sep 2008, at 11:20, Kryten wrote:
Just to flag up a previous question, is there such a thing as an
enclosure to convert these ATA internal drives to external Firewire?
Some here: http://tiny.cc/5ZwYQ Other places have them too, although
USB is more common than Firewire.
best wishes,
Paul Bradforth
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Well actually I’m open to advice here. If I have to buy a new Mac, I would like to boot from this (now) external drive, simply to save the time of streamlining & re-installing every app I use, plus all the hassle of re-activations . Can you do that with a USB drive? I also use SuperDuper for smart backup which I think requires Firewire doesn’t it? So I thought on balance FireWire was the way to go.
Well I’ve taken the PSU to the doctors and am awaiting the diagnosis.
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Presumably I’m looking for just ATA drive enclosures and is that the only definition by which they are identified?? Not SATA, IDE or eSATA - confused sorry.
K
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An Intel Mac can boot from a properly-formatted USB disk, but if you
were using this disk in your G4, then by definition, it’s not the
right format. You may not be able to boot from either of your G4’s
internal disks on an Intel Mac, but if you have them in a FireWire or
USB2 case, you should be able to use SuperDuper to clone their
contents onto your new drive without losing any “magic” bits.
Walter
On Sep 5, 2008, at 7:22 AM, Kryten wrote:
Well actually I’m open to advice here. If I have to buy a new Mac,
I would like to boot from this (now) external drive, simply to save
the time of streamlining & re-installing every app I use, plus all
the hassle of re-activations . Can you do that with a USB drive? I
also use SuperDuper for smart backup which I think requires
Firewire doesn’t it? So I thought on balance FireWire was the way
to go.Well I’ve taken the PSU to the doctors and am awaiting the diagnosis.
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‘Magic bits’ - says it all Walt. I presume my internal HD’s are 3.5" ATA/IDE right? I thought I would replace the contents of the new Mac’s HD with the contents of the (now) external Macintosh HD. Will that work on an Intel?
K.
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Sometime around 5/9/08 (at 08:09 -0400) Kryten said:
I presume my internal HD’s are 3.5" ATA/IDE right?
Right. The FireWire or USB part is simply how the enclosure
connects to a computer. Inside the box, the connections will need to
be standard ATA to connect your IDE disks.
I thought I would replace the contents of the new Mac’s HD with the
contents of the (now) external Macintosh HD. Will that work on an
Intel?
Short answer? No.
The long answer involves questions. What OS version were you running
on that Mac? It is certain that you can’t use the system
installation, but if it is recent enough you could (probably) copy
much of the third-party gubbins across. And then see whether that
makes any difference…!
You could try using the feature for copying data from a
FireWire-connected Mac during system setup. That might work with a
regular FireWire hard disk case as well as a full-blown Mac, but I’m
afraid I can’t remember for certain.
Be ready to reinstall everything. Then any succes you have with
copying stuff across will be a bonus.
k
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By the way - before you go ahead and buy a drive enclosure, take a
good, hard look at the cost of ones with drives inside already. Disk
space is cheap now, and you could well get something with a
reasonably-sized drive inside for not much more than the price of an
empty chassis. You’ll also be stepping outside the realm of possible
incompatibility, although the issue with out-of-date firmware is a
very old one.
I know you want to use your existing HD. But you can swap the
internal drive mechanisms very easily on every external FireWire
drive box that I’ve ever seen. And the probable size of your dead
Mac’s disk, plus its age, means you should consider ditching it once
you’ve retrieved your data.
Once that’s done you could replace the original new drive mechanism
and you’ll have a modern-sized external disk that you could use as
your Time Machine backup, perhaps.
k
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If you really replace the contents – do a bit-for-bit copy from the
PPC to the Intel disk – you may end up with something unworkable.
Mac OS X is really universal hardware-wise, but if you had installed
a lot of things onto PPC hardware, the various installers might not
have given you everything you need.
I would get the G4’s boot disk into a working FireWire case, then
use /Applications/Utilities/Migration Assistant to do the moving.
We’ve just gone through a round of upgrades here (new MacBook Pro for
me, trickle-down economics for my daughters) and MA worked flawlessly
for all of them. In your case, just nod and smile when you get to the
step in the assistant where it tells you to “put your other computer
in Target Disk Mode”, since that’s just a fancy name for temporarily
turning your Mac into a very expensive FireWire enclosure. Plug in
the now-external disk and let the assistant chug away. (It can take
hours!) In my experience (lately) MA is a very safe way to move your
stuff without breaking things further down the stack and closer to
“the metal”.
For the contents of the second disk, you can probably get those to
move using a Finder copy. If there are any files on that disk that
were put there by a different user than yourself (and if you care
about preserving that ownership), then you might want to use
SuperDuper or another utility to move them.
If you plan on using these disks further, say for backup or transfer,
then by all means get two cases. But if all you are trying to do is
get the data off of them, just buy one, and don’t re-assemble the
case all the way while you are doing the transfer. Also watch out for
jumper settings on the drive – your case may have specific
requirements vis-a-vis Master/Slave/Cable Select. (Most drive
mechanisms have the specific jumper settings printed on them, and all
you need are some sturdy tweezers or a fine needle-nose pliers to
move the jumpers.) What works inside your Mac is almost guaranteed
not to work inside the case, which is another good argument for not
completely assembling the case before trying it out!
Walter
On Sep 5, 2008, at 8:09 AM, Kryten wrote:
‘Magic bits’ - says it all Walt. I presume my internal HD’s are
3.5" ATA/IDE right? I thought I would replace the contents of the
new Mac’s HD with the contents of the (now) external Macintosh HD.
Will that work on an Intel?
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Thanks Keith - good advice I’m sure. What you say does make perfect sense and depending on the results about the PSU, I shall come back here and read through again.
I seem to remember once owning a Centris 610 with a 230Mb drive. How the heck did we cope then? And doing quite a sizeable corporate brochure on it too for an American Parking Company.
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Sometime around 5/9/08 (at 09:33 -0400) Kryten said:
I seem to remember once owning a Centris 610 with a 230Mb drive. How
the heck did we cope then?
Yeah. Ouch.
I remember choosing my IIsi configuration for more RAM rather than
more storage; 5/40 rather than 3/80. I figured 5 megs of RAM would be
more useful than going for the 80MB disk config.
Now a single TIFF from a processed RAW photo would crowd the larger
of those sizes! All is relative.
k
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At 07:40 -0400 5/9/08, Kryten wrote:
Presumably I’m looking for just ATA drive enclosures and is that the
only definition by which they are identified?? Not SATA, IDE or
eSATA - confused sorry.
Could be marked PATA - Parallel ATA - which is what old ATA is.
David
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David Ledger - Freelance Unix Sysadmin in the UK.
HP-UX specialist of hpUG technical user group (www.hpug.org.uk)
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Hi - if I can jump back in here, I’m sure I won’t be hi-jacking your issue Kryten as you may find the information of use also.
I too am in a position where I am very close to buying a new iMac to replace my trusty, though aging and grumbly, G4. I was advised to put it in target disk mode and drag all of the date across but, as far as software is concerned, I should re-install everything. This I feel is quite daunting. I have an external F/wire drive that has a bootable backup on but I run Tiger on the G4 and the iMac will be Leopard, will I be able to use migration assistant ? … any advice welcome. Regards Roger
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I haven’t tested this specifically, but it’s exactly the sort of
situation that MA was written for, so I suspect it will work just
fine. If you are worried, remember that your new Mac will come with a
restore disk, and you can get back to where you started with three or
five clicks and a walk to the pub.
Walter
On Sep 5, 2008, at 10:52 AM, Roger Burton wrote:
but I run Tiger on the G4 and the iMac will be Leopard, will I be
able to use migration assistant ?
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Thanks Waltd … now look what you’ve gone and done, it’s 4.30 on a Friday afternoon, I’m going to rehearse the software transfer, time for a walk to the pub.
Hope y’all have nice weekends and you get things sorted Kryten, strange how reliant we become on our little machines.
Roger
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On 5 Sep 2008, at 16:18, Walter Lee Davis wrote:
I haven’t tested this specifically, but it’s exactly the sort of
situation that MA was written for
I’ve experienced a migration from PowerBook to MacBook Pro with no
pain. Likewise, a PPC Mac mini to Intel iMac. It just took a while,
but it was fun to see a complete existing user transferred to the new
machine, intact and raring to go.
Heather
“Freeway - Web Design for All”
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Sounds promising Heather, thank you, now I really must get to the pub …
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I’ve used migration assistant several times, wish no issues so far. By far the easiest method for moving software, and/or users accounts with all data intact from machine to machine.
On 5 Sep 2008, at 15:52, Roger Burton wrote:
will I be able to use migration assistant ?
David Owen
Thanks to all for the valuable advice, Walt for the in-depth post. I’ve never used MA. Will that allow me to select what I copy over, as in everything but the OS?
Still waiting with baited breath for that call…what a nightmare.
K
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Thanks to all for the valuable advice, Walt for the in-depth post. I’ve never used MA. Will that allow me to select what I copy over, as in everything but the OS?
MA does that for your automatically. It knows the Mac you are transfering to has a newer OS so it ignores that part of your old Mac.
Word of caution: You can use MA for any Mac to Mac transfer, but if transfering from a laptop to desktop Mac you will wind up with all the laptop settings in your desktop. Desktop Macs have no use for battery settings, etc. that are specific to laptops.
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On 5 Sep 2008, at 17:01, Kryten wrote:
Will that allow me to select what I copy over, as in everything but
the OS?
Generally, you run it after you’ve installed an OS version. Therefore,
you when you first run a new Mac, it goes through the rigmarole of
playing some funky music, asking for your personal details, and gives
an option to migrate from another computer. At this point, it should
give step-by-step information how to do that.
Generally you will get an entire user Home folder, and all
applications (with associated preferences and baggage) that are not
part of the basic installation of OS X.
In my case, the Mac mini to iMac migration resulted in the mini’s user
arriving on the iMac in toto, alongside the new user I’d set up. It’s
still there, but it’s not used, and eventually I will delete it.
Hope that helps.
Heather
“Freeway - Web Design for All”
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