Cloning a bootable backup volume from a G4 onto a G5 boot drive?

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Cloning a bootable backup volume from a G4 onto a G5 boot drive?

In the next couple of weeks, I may be acquiring a G5 Quad, as described in other threads I started recently. I was wondering whether cloning my current bootable Tiger 10.4.11 backup volume (FireWire) from my MDD Dual G4 onto the G5's boot drive is even feasible.

I would first:

• write the G5 hard drive to zeros to get rid of its current Leopard install and lock out errors,

• then clone the bootable Tiger 10.4.11 backup volume (FireWire) from my MDD Dual G4 onto it

• and immediately run the Tiger 10.4.11 Combo Updater on it again to —hopefully—gain any G5-specific install elements.

Any chance I can get away with it? 😉 Otherwise I'm looking at installing everything from scratch (about 170 apps in the root Application folder, plus 66 in the Utilities folder), including deactivating and re-activating four or five Adobe point applications not part of a suite. I do have the retail Tiger 10.4.6 discs and could do a fresh install and update it to 10.4.11, then spend a month or longer installing the apps from scratch and permanently disabling Spotblight and Dashboard, etc. 😝

G5 has two internal HDs now, a 1 TB and a 250 GB. I plan to use the smaller one as my dedicated Photoshop scratch disk. 16 GB of RAM.

Thanks in advance for any and all input.

Crossing my fingers.

Message was edited by: Ramón G Castañeda

Dual 1.25MHz MDD G4, 2GB RAM, 4 int dr.3ext FW drives, Mac OS X (10.4.11), nVidia 7800 GS 425MHz 256MB video card, dual 22" CRT monitors

Posted on Aug 5, 2011 2:07 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

old comm guy

Level 4

2,249 points

Aug 5, 2011 3:06 PM in response to Ramón G Castañeda

Ramón G Castañeda wrote:

Any chance I can get away with it? 😉

The chances are excellent!

When I came into possession of the G5 tower three years ago, I did a Retrospect restore onto the G5 boot volume of the boot volume on my Blue & White G3, which at that time had 10.3.9 on it (which was a later version than what shipped originally on my G5), then I brought it up to Tiger 10.4.11 (which of course took quite a while because, among other things, the serial Update-Java stuff). Your clone of 10.4.11 boot volume to a SATA drive on the G5 should work just fine.

What I would do would be to bring the G5 up in Target data mode (cmd-T) at boot, then connect to the G4 via Firewire and do the initializations and cloning from the G4, then eject the G5 volume off the G4 desktop and power down the G5 (I think you have to just force power it down, but that shouldn't be a problem since the hard disc is not mounted). Disconnect the Firewire cable between the machines. Then, power the G5 with the option key pressed until you get the boot manager and select the boot volume and kick the "go" arrow.

If you use SuperDuper! for the cloning, be advised that some of the preferences will have to be set or reset on the G5, probably, as not all of the plist files will be copied over as a precaution against bad things happening at boot or login.

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Answer 2

BDAqua

Level 10

238,979 points

Aug 5, 2011 3:06 PM in response to Ramón G Castañeda

Yes, no problem, my Quad G5 is right now booting from a 10.4.11 clone from a G4, or a 10.5.8 clone from a G4. 🙂

and immediately run the Tiger 10.4.11 Combo Updater on it again to —hopefully—gain any G5-specific install elements.

Won't hurt, but I don't think it's needed. 😉

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Answer 3

Aug 5, 2011 3:09 PM in response to BDAqua

BDAqua wrote:

Won't hurt, but I don't think it's needed. 😉

I agree. I don't think the installers or updaters do a lot of Gestalt filtering on HW because who knows what somebody will add to their machine later.

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Answer 4

Aug 5, 2011 3:38 PM in response to old comm guy

old comm guy wrote:

I don't think the installers or updaters do a lot of Gestalt filtering on HW because who knows what somebody will add to their machine later.

Just did a little Science Fair study by comparing the contents of /System/Library/Extensions on the G5 and one of the TiBooks, both running 10.4.11. Excepting for the handful of debug or third-party kexts, the other 228 kext filenames are identical. That at least backs up a little bit my earlier assertion.

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Answer 5

Aug 5, 2011 5:01 PM in response to Ramón G Castañeda

Thank you, old comm guy, this is just music to to my ears! 🙂

I actually like the idea of having to reset preferences. No problem with that at all.

Two things I thought I better disable before the cloning are "Enable nap at startup" which I did through CHUD on the G4 and the "fan kext file" provided by mac_geniuses for extra cooling of the mutant flashed Nvidia 7800GS card I put in the G4 to enable OpenGL features in Photoshop 11.x, as I believe that fan kext file is specific to the MDD G4.

Now I'm really looking forward to this upgrade.

Thanks again.

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Answer 6

Aug 5, 2011 5:00 PM in response to BDAqua

Thank you for your most helpful extra reassurances, BDAqua. Much appreciated.

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Answer 7

Aug 5, 2011 5:20 PM in response to old comm guy

old comm guy wrote:

… What I would do would be to bring the G5 up in Target data mode (cmd-T) at boot, then connect to the G4 via Firewire and do the initializations and cloning from the G4, then eject the G5 volume off the G4 desktop and power down the G5 (I think you have to just force power it down, but that shouldn't be a problem since the hard disc is not mounted). Disconnect the Firewire cable between the machines. Then, power the G5 with the option key pressed until you get the boot manager and select the boot volume and kick the "go" arrow…

Thanks for these detailed unstructions. I'll have my various Pogue Missing Manuals handy in case I get stuck somewhere along the line.

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Answer 8

Aug 5, 2011 5:07 PM in response to BDAqua

Both of you guys have been helpful beyond my wildest expectations. Thank you both again.

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Answer 9

Aug 5, 2011 5:19 PM in response to old comm guy

I especially love the part that this maneuver will result in the intrusive and useless Spotblight and the Dashboard being disabled permanently and automatically from the get go on the G5 Quad as they are now on my MDD G4. 😀

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Answer 10

BDAqua

Level 10

238,979 points

Aug 5, 2011 6:51 PM in response to Ramón G Castañeda

You're lucky the G5 won't run 10.6 or 10.7, where theres lots more worthless stuff that can't be disabled! 😉

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Answer 11

Aug 5, 2011 9:40 PM in response to BDAqua

BDAqua wrote:

You're lucky the G5 won't run 10.6 or 10.7, where theres lots more worthless stuff that can't be disabled! 😉

Oh, I know! That's the main reason I'm getting the G5 Quad and not looking at a Mac-Intel. I want no part of any of the Leopards or the Lion. I have such machines all around me and I've actually worked on them—briefly. No way!

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Answer 12

BDAqua

Level 10

238,979 points

Aug 5, 2011 10:17 PM in response to Ramón G Castañeda

I fear that Macs as a viable computer platform are going away, it looks like iPhone, FaceBook, & iCloud by the Byte from here on out! 😟

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