move program file to external hard drive?

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Level 1

16 points

move program file to external hard drive?

Good morning group,

I am currently working with my 2002 PowerBook G4 12", 867MHz, 40GB, 1.25 RAM, running Tiger OSX 10.4

I recenly purchased a Leopard 10.5 install disc and want to reboot my laptop to Leopard. I also purchased Microsoft Office 2008 suite, but cannot find my install disc.

My goal is to transfer data like my ITunes library, documents and Office program to an external hard drive, delete any remaining content from the laptop hard drive, then install Leopard onto the laptop and re-install the data and programs from the external drive.

Since i am reasonably intelligent but not overly computer savvy, this seems like a doable event. My question is how do I accomplish this task? i guess that I am looking for a step-by-step assistance, but do not want anyone to reinvent the wheel; prior to this post, I attempted to search this forum for a solution, but to no avail. Any assistance would be appreciated. As it currently stands, I cannot even use my IPhone with this computer due to Tiger program limitations, and I do not want to lose Office.

Thanks in advance, Chardagha

Powerbook G4 6,2 12" 1GHz, 40 GB 1.25 RAM, Mac OS X (10.5.8), PB G4 6,4 12" 1.33GHz, 60 GB; PB G4 12" 867 GHz 40 GB

Posted on Jan 7, 2013 9:28 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

Allan Jones

Level 9

68,588 points

Jan 7, 2013 9:51 AM in response to Chardagha

I seem to recall that Office would not run from an non-booting volume in OSX. I know when I've installed Office on several Macs with either [a] multiple internal drive or [b] that have external drive connected, only the internal boot volume is shown as a possible destination for the install.

You may get better help on this issue in the MS forums for Office:Mac. They are very good:

Office for Mac forums

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Answer 2

Jan 7, 2013 4:05 PM in response to Chardagha

Get your new hard drive and mount it in a housing that connects to your PB with a Firewire cable. When an external HD is connected via Firewire it is bootable from your PowerBook.

After you connect the external HD, use Disk Utility on your PB to format the HD to Journaled HFS+. Then use Carbon Copy Cloner app to clone your PB HD to the external HD. Then boot the external HD to make sure everything transfered OK. Then you can wipe the PB's HD and install Leopard on it. Then you can use Carbon Copy Cloner to transfer your files from the external HD to the PB HD

In lieu of M$ Office you can use the freeware NeoOffice. http://download.neooffice.org/neojava/en/index.php

NeoOffice is equivalent to Microsoft Office. It can open Excel files, Word files & PowerPoint files. You can also create these types of files that can be opened by PC users.

FYI

Installing Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1544

Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard Installation and Setup Guide

http://manuals.info.apple.com/en/leopard_install-setup.pdf

After you install the base 10.5, download & install the 10.5.8 combo update at http://support.apple.com/downloads/Mac_OS_X_10_5_8_Combo_Update

The Leopard install DVD should look like this

 Cheers, Tom 😉

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Answer 3

Jan 7, 2013 4:10 PM in response to Chardagha

It has been my experience that moving the executables for application generally doesn't work. If it does work at all, it generally leads to problems sooner or later.

To top it off the executables are usually much smaller then the data. So for the greatest bang for the buck, one should move the data and leave the little executables along where the installer put them.

Allan

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