Can powermac g5 boot from USB?

No I haven't done that! I can't find the new HD in Disk Utility. When I went into disk utility, all that I saw was my old HD (w/ Tiger) and "network." Choosing network put a spinning globe on the screen that took me two days to figure out how to get back. Does it matter what bay my new HD is in? Maybe I'm looking in the wrong part of disk utility.

Thanks so much for the advice. Some of the guys above seem to think that booting from firewire is better or even the only way. Why is that? Is it faster or more reliable? I don't know how to do it that way either. Would I do it your way, but choose the firewire port in Open Firmware and type something else? Or just load like normal? I upgraded from Panther to Tiger years ago and it seemed so much simpler then, just time consuming...

You know, I'm a total dunce when it comes to formatting. Can I just plug in my new HD solo and format it or do I have to have my old HD w/ Tiger on it too? I'm so afraid of accidentally formatting that and losing the info on it.

I'm also under the impression that firewire 800 is as fast as or even faster than USB (is that true?)

Way faster than USB.

Some of the guys above seem to think that booting from firewire is better or even the only way. Why is that? Is it faster or more reliable?

Again, much faster and as reliable as tomorrow. Firewire boot support is an integral part of PPC firmware.

My new problem is the 3TB Barracuda I just bought.

Seagates can be iffy in a G5. If Disk Utility doesn't see the drive, then you need to install a jumper on it to limit the data rate to SATA 3 Gbps if a SATA 6 Gbps drive or limit to SATA 1.5 Gbps if a SATA 3 Gbps drive.

The G5 controller doesn't always properly autonegotiate, thus the need for the jumper.

Also, to boot to a drive in a PPC machine, the Partition scheme must be APM. Due to a limitation of APM, max drive size supported is 2.2 TB.

If you want all possible, when formatting the drive, partition the drive so that no one partiton is greater than 2.2 TB.

You can also format set the partition scheme to GPT, but the drive won't be bootable; only good for storage.

First, though, open Disk Utility and format the new drive.

do I have to have my old HD w/ Tiger on it too?

Yes, you need a boot source and a source to run Disk Utility from.

Just pay attention to the drive make and name, and give your new Seagate a unique name.

If you can boot from the Install Disc, that'll work for formatting the new drive.

How to format your disks...

http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/partitioning_tiger.html

Thanks to Pondini, Formatting, Partitioning, Verifying, and Repairing Disks...

http://Pondini.org/OSX/DU.html

thanks japamac and BDaqua! I have no doubt that ALL of this info and these links will come in handy when my optic drv comes next week.

What about me? I thought I was helpful too... Just try what I told you to do and you will see that the optical drive will boot up Leopard in no time..

Its not that hard.

Open Firmware - press OPT+COMMAND+O+F

Type devalias and look for "ud"

type: boot ud:,\\:tbxi - this assumes you have ONE USB bootable drive hooked up.

Again, its not that hard.

No way! I'm totally thankful for your posts! It's just that it seems firewire 800 is faster and more reliable, and that's how I'm going to leave it afterwards. Also, I've had this computer for 6 years and never used a firewire device, so I'm kind of excited to see how fast it is. I will be considering your advice and everyone's advice for formatting this HD too (looks like I'll need to make a 2.2TB partition in APM, as that is the max, right? I'll put the OS on the 0.8TB partition, set it for "journaling" and use the other part for media [NOT set for journaling]).

I presume that my MOD is to format the new HD first, then load Leopard onto my old HD, then, load Leopard onto my new HD, so I can use Migration ***. to consolidate them (onto the 0.8TB partition). Then add my current backup (secondary) media HD onto the 2.2TB partition (while leaving it in the second bay as another backup- it's got 260GB, which is still useful).

If the firewire plan fails, I will try your USB solution. Just got my OWC op drive last night and I think I may go down to the studio and try it all tonight. Excited, but a little nervous. I need to be making music again and my Mac is dedicated to that (while my PC at home is for all else).

Right now, I have Digital Performer on a 180GB HD with Tiger, because it must be on the same HD as the OS. The audio files/undos/ancillary files are on a second 260HD. My main concern is that when they are all consolidated to one HD (though on different partitions), DP will still be able to find the current associations to these ancillary files.

I'll let you know how it goes and I'll be back with questions if it goes to **** in hand basket... or an optical basket.

Peace

I do have a question about journaling. Why should I turn it off on the media volume of my HD? Does it take up too much space? I'm concerned that it might be required for DP. Perhaps I should try to see how it is set on my current HD.

Speaking from personal experience,

I reccomend you use journaling on both your boot partition and your media partition. It is there for the well being of the drive. If for instance you lose power to the system and the drive's file system is damaged, the journal (hence journaled) is consulted on correcting it. You can proceed without journaling, but should an issue come up where you need Disk Utility to repair it fast and easy, you will wish you set it to journaled.

My Journaling Story:

Old G4 system from a school was given to me, plugged it in, power goes out figures. Entire hard disk has damage to the file system and OS X was unable to start. Ended up wiping it fresh with 10.4 (Journaled) so when it happened again all I did was pop in my USB Restore Disk and click repair disk.

I forgot to mention. In most cases an unjournaled drive can be repaired, but 2 TB of data to read is too much and will easily take a day to run through. It is because should power fail or something else, your Mac has no log of what data was written right before it happened, there fore it must "check" everything.

It shouldn't take too much space, I do not know how much exactly, maybe someone can chime in.

Thanks, I'm going to do that. It's a pretty massive drive. Lots of space.

In my experience, if anything is flaky in the Mac, Journalling can make it an impossible never ending loop of never being able to repair the drive, if the journal is bad it keeps restoring bad info.

If everything is right with the world, then jounalling is a plus. 🙂

Well, I'm here in Leopard... I haven't yet formatted the new HD and installed Leopard on it or transferred everything over, because I'm having an issue: I ran DP5 and it worked fine, but when I closed it, my computer froze and I got a panic report that said I had to press and hold the button for several seconds to restart it. This happened four out of four times when I opened and closed DP. All the updates for DP5 (ver 5.13) and for Leopard (ver 10.5.8) are installed and maxed to as current as they can go. If this can't be resolved, I don't want Leopard on my new HD. Any advice?

I made a copy of the report:

Interval Since Last Panic Report: 0 sec

Panics Since Last Report: 1

Anonymous UUID: AFB77C97-4A81-44D2-82DF-8513B06A7935

Tue Jan 15 23:32:11 2013

Unresolved kernel trap(cpu 1): 0x300 - Data access DAR=0x0000000000000017 PC=0x0000000000C49E80

Latest crash info for cpu 1:

Exception state (sv=0x639b6c80)

PC=0x00C49E80; MSR=0x00009030; DAR=0x00000017; DSISR=0x40000000; LR=0x00C6046C; R1=0x639C2A50; XCP=0x0000000C (0x300 - Data access)

Backtrace:

0x0035DA48 0x00C6046C 0x0037EDDC 0x0038141C 0x0037E6D4 0x00094E74

0x0002C100 0x00024B58 0x000B45CC 0x00000000

backtrace terminated - frame not mapped or invalid: 0xBFFFDC40

Kernel loadable modules in backtrace (with dependencies):

com.LynxStudio.driver.LynxTWO(1.0.4d1)@0xc2f000->0xc68fff

dependency: com.apple.iokit.IOPCIFamily(2.6)@0x81a000

dependency: com.apple.iokit.IOAudioFamily(1.6.9fc5)@0x4d1000

Proceeding back via exception chain:

Exception state (sv=0x639b6c80)

previously dumped as "Latest" state. skipping...

Exception state (sv=0x63569780)

PC=0x9479E1F8; MSR=0x0000F030; DAR=0x07363E14; DSISR=0x0A000000; LR=0x947A5120; R1=0xBFFFDC40; XCP=0x00000030 (0xC00 - System call)

BSD process name corresponding to current thread: MIDIServer

Mac OS version:

9L31a

Kernel version:

Darwin Kernel Version 9.8.0: Wed Jul 15 16:57:01 PDT 2009; root:xnu-1228.15.4~1/RELEASE_PPC

System model name: PowerMac7,3

System uptime in nanoseconds: 1019346678323

unloaded kexts:

com.apple.driver.Apple02DBDMAAudio 2.5.8f1 - last unloaded 6523241459

loaded kexts:

com.paceap.kext.pacesupport.leopard 5.6.1

com.uaudio.driver.HypKern 5.6.0

com.uaudio.kext.HypAudio 5.6.0

com.LynxStudio.driver.LynxTWO 1.0.4d1

com.apple.filesystems.autofs 2.0.2 - last loaded 1665556802

com.apple.driver.InternalModemSupport 2.4.0

com.apple.driver.MotorolaSM56K 1.3.9

com.apple.driver.AppleTopazAudio 2.5.8f1

com.apple.driver.AppleTAS3004Audio 2.5.8f1

com.apple.driver.AppleTexasAudio 2.5.8f1

com.apple.driver.AppleTexas2Audio 2.5.8f1

com.apple.driver.AppleDACAAudio 2.5.8f1

com.apple.driver.AppleMaxim6690 1.9d0

com.apple.driver.AudioIPCDriver 1.0.6

com.apple.driver.AppleLM7x 1.9d0

com.apple.driver.AppleK2Fan 1.0.10f1

com.apple.driver.AppleSCCSerial 1.3.2

com.apple.driver.AppleFCU 1.3.2b0

com.apple.driver.AppleFan 1.0.10f1

com.apple.driver.AppleADT746x 1.0.10f1

com.apple.driver.AppleSlewClock 1.5.2d0

com.apple.driver.AppleHWSensor 1.9d0

com.apple.driver.AppleCPUVoltage 1.5.2d0

com.apple.iokit.IOFireWireIP 1.7.7

com.apple.ATIRadeon9700 5.4.8

com.apple.driver.AppleUSBAudio 2.6.4b17

com.apple.driver.AppleVSP 2.2.2

com.apple.driver.AppleThermal 1.0.1f2

com.apple.driver.AppleSEP 1.3.0

com.apple.driver.AppleK2Driver 1.7.2f1

com.apple.driver.AppleHWClock 1.5.2d0

com.apple.driver.AppleADM103x 1.0.10f1

com.apple.driver.PowerMac7_2_PlatformPlugin 3.4.0d0

com.apple.driver.AppleI2S 1.0.1f1

com.apple.driver.AppleAD741x 1.9d0

com.apple.driver.AppleFileSystemDriver 1.1.0

com.apple.iokit.IOUSBHIDDriver 3.4.6

com.apple.driver.AppleUSBMergeNub 3.5.2

com.apple.iokit.IOSCSIMultimediaCommandsDevice 2.1.1

com.apple.iokit.SCSIT`

Here's my SYSTEM CONFIGURATION:

Model: PowerMac7,3, BootROM 5.1.8f7, 2 processors, PowerPC G5 (2.2), 2 GHz, 6.5 GB

Graphics: kHW_ATIrv360Item, ATY,RV360, spdisplays_agp_device, 128 MB

Memory Module: DIMM0/J11, 1 GB, DDR SDRAM, PC3200U-30440

Memory Module: DIMM1/J12, 1 GB, DDR SDRAM, PC3200U-30440

Memory Module: DIMM2/J13, 1 GB, DDR SDRAM, PC3200U-30440

Memory Module: DIMM3/J14, 1 GB, DDR SDRAM, PC3200U-30440

Memory Module: DIMM4/J41, 1 GB, DDR SDRAM, PC3200U-30440

Memory Module: DIMM5/J42, 1 GB, DDR SDRAM, PC3200U-30440

Memory Module: DIMM6/J43, 256 MB, DDR SDRAM, PC3200U-30330

Memory Module: DIMM7/J44, 256 MB, DDR SDRAM, PC3200U-30330

AirPort: spairport_wireless_card_type_airport_extreme (0x14E4, 0x4E), Broadcom BCM43xx 1.0 (4.170.25.8)

Modem: Jump, V.92, Version 1.0

Network Service: Built-in Ethernet, Ethernet, en0

PCI Card: AES16, ProAudio, SLOT-2

PCI Card: Universal Audio UAD-1 Project Pak, sppci_othermultimedia, SLOT-3

PCI Card: Universal Audio UAD-1 Ultra Pak, sppci_othermultimedia, SLOT-4

Serial ATA Device: ST3160023AS, 149.05 GB

Serial ATA Device: ST3300831AS, 279.46 GB

USB Device: hub_device, (null) mA

USB Device: Hub in Apple Extended USB Keyboard, (null) mA

USB Device: iLok, (null) mA

USB Device: composite_device, (null) mA

USB Device: Apple Extended USB Keyboard, (null) mA

USB Device: Keystation Pro 88, (null) mA

FireWire Device: OWC Mercury Removable Quad, Other World Computing, 800mbit_speed

BTW, I used firewire and it seemed to work alright. Then I used the seller's provided 10.5.8 update DVD and it had some installation issues (it wouldn't finish 'scripting' with 2 minutes left, I had to force quit and do the updates via "software update"). Could the update be the source of the panic report issue?

com.LynxStudio.driver.LynxTWO

What's this? It's pretty high up towards the panic occurrence....