Booting from a firewire external drive for a G3 iMac

think the original iMac G3 HD may be bad so want to boot from an external firewire drive with OS 10.4. hasn't worked so far.



iMac 27″, macOS 12.7

Posted on Jan 24, 2025 10:25 AM

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Posted on Jan 24, 2025 1:27 PM

Is the external hard drive formatted as Mac OS Extended (HFS+) and does it have a compatible software build to boot the G3 iMac? If the OS 10.4 installation on the FireWire drive was created using another Mac's Restore disk or a disk image found online, it usually won't work. A compatible software build would be found on the iMac's original Restore disk or on a Tiger retail (universal) installer disk.

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Jan 24, 2025 1:27 PM in response to Paul Roese1

Is the external hard drive formatted as Mac OS Extended (HFS+) and does it have a compatible software build to boot the G3 iMac? If the OS 10.4 installation on the FireWire drive was created using another Mac's Restore disk or a disk image found online, it usually won't work. A compatible software build would be found on the iMac's original Restore disk or on a Tiger retail (universal) installer disk.

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Booting from a firewire external drive for a G3 iMac

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