Migrating OS X from Old iMac to PowerMac

jfoster435 · Mar 17th, 2005, 01:02 PM

Hi All,

I recently bought myself a used but fairly new PowerMac DP 1.8 Ghz, to replace my tried and true, but very old, early iMac.

On my iMac, you may recall that to run OS X (I am running 10.3.8) one had to partition the internal hard drive so that the first 8 Gigabytes (or something like that) was the boot volume and the remainder was one or more secondary volumes which could NOT be OS X boot volumes. That's the way I have my iMac configured, with OS X and OS 9.2.1 on the initial 8 Gig partion and no OS's on the second 60+ Gig partition.

Now, the PowerMac came with a single internal 160 Gig internal hard drive. I have since ordered a second 300 Gig internal hard drive. The original hard drive is also running OS 10.3.8 and OS 9.2.1. I don't want to reformat that hard drive because the unit came with some commercial applications I would like to retain.

So, my questions are:

(i) can I use something like Carbon Copy Cloner to pack up and move my entire iMac boot volume over to the PowerMac? By this I mean that it is my understanding that these days there is no difference between OS X 10.3.8 installed on an iMac versus OS 10.3.8 installed on a PowerMac and therefore it should boot up the PowerMac OK. I also mean can I move an 8 Gig partition onto another larger partition and simply have the extra space on the hard drive as more free space, or do I have to so something like ShrinkWrap used to require which was to create an empty volume of exactly the same size as the volume you were moving?

(i) I am thinking of putting this moved partition onto my new 300 Gig internal hard drive, but can anyone tell me if it is possible to have TWO or more OS X System Folders on the same volume? By this I mean do I have the option to move my iMac boot volume over to my existiing PowerMac boot volume and simply choose which OS I want to boot from using the Startup System Preferences?

Thanks for any advice.

Jim Foster

Robert Costain · Mar 17th, 2005, 08:41 PM

	Quote:			Originally Posted by jfoster435
	(i) can I use something like Carbon Copy Cloner to pack up and move my entire iMac boot volume over to the PowerMac? By this I mean that it is my understanding that these days there is no difference between OS X 10.3.8 installed on an iMac versus OS 10.3.8 installed on a PowerMac and therefore it should boot up the PowerMac OK. I also mean can I move an 8 Gig partition onto another larger partition and simply have the extra space on the hard drive as more free space, or do I have to so something like ShrinkWrap used to require which was to create an empty volume of exactly the same size as the volume you were moving?

You should be able to use Carbon Copy Cloner to move your iMac system to the new machine. Even if the original partition is only 8 GB, it will only copy the files, not the partition info.

Best regards,
Rob

Spiffie25 · Mar 19th, 2005, 01:52 AM

If you have not set up a user on the new mac yet (or if you want to restore the new Mac with the Apple Software Restore CD/DVD that came with it). Apple has included a program that runs during the first start that can transfer all the user accounts with all the files and applications from an older mac though the Firewire port using firewire disk mode (this will mount all partitions on the Hard Drive). when the transfer is done and you reboot the new Mac you will have the same user accounts and all there files and apps that were on the older Mac. the only requirment is that the older Mac must have built in Firewire. if you have the first (Bondi) iMac then this will not work as that Mac has no firewire ports.