Need to put a larger HD in Mac G4, easiest way to keep things as they are?

[Microman]

I need to increase the size of my bootable HD, in my Mac G4/400. I dont want to have to redo too much, but want a nice workable clean system.

What can I do short of putting in this drive, and resinstalling the system.

Thanks.

[The Grim Ninja]

Which drive do you have?

This is a G4 tower?

If it's a G4 tower and your hard drive is 120 GB or less, just make it a slave and add it onto the bus with your current hard drive.


If you want a good deal of increased speed... make it the master, install it on the bus with your current drive after making it a slave.. then Carbon Copy Clone your old drive onto the new one, reboot to the new drive, and erase the old one. (Feel free to take out the old drive at this point).

If your new drive is over 120 GB, how far?
G4 towers at 400 Mhz only see 128 GB Max without using a new IDE/SATA/FW controller for the drive.

[mattkime]

install the new drive as a slave. just use carbon copy cloner to copy your old system to your new drive.

[Ken Sp.]

CCC is great for this as mentioned.

You can also put the old drive in an external enclosure--and use migration assisitant to move everything over to a new clean install

I think Migration assistant also lets you do it from another volume on the same computer--so you could use the slave/master set up also--I just checked---it does work

[Silencio]

There's no speed difference between the master and slave drives. So just install your new 120GB drive as a slave, carbon copy clone your old drive to the new one, and enjoy.

[Paul F.]

Yup..

Use Carbon Copy Cloner.

[Microman]

Great... Carbon Copy Cloner. Thanks.

Forgot about the 120 gig limit. Have a couple of 200 GIG drives.

Are the IDE controllers expensive? Hate to lose 80 gigs.

[ka jowct]

Buying an ATA controller makes a lot more sense then farking up a couple of 200GB drives by formatting them to 128GB (something you may not be able to undo later). $60-$80, possibly less if you get lucky on eBay.

I have a G4/450 with a pair of 120GB drives on the built-in ATA controller, and one 250GB SATA drive plus SATA card.

You also have the option of putting the 200GB drives into FW enclosures.