Appleboy45

Q: Installing Mac OS on FireWire Hard Drive?

I want to have to operating systems on my iMac G3. Since I only got a 20GB hard drive, can I buy a FireWire hard drive, and put Mac OS 9 on that hard drive, and put OS X 10.X on the internal hard drive?

iMac, Mac OS X (10.4.11), G3 Processor

Posted on Mar 31, 2016 12:13 PM

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Q: Installing Mac OS on FireWire Hard Drive?

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  • by Kenichi Watanabe,

    Kenichi Watanabe Kenichi Watanabe Mar 31, 2016 1:10 PM in response to Appleboy45
    Level 8 (38,389 points)
    Mac OS X
    Mar 31, 2016 1:10 PM in response to Appleboy45

    Mac OS 9 has a volume-size limit.  This old document has information

     

    Macintosh: Using 128 GB or Larger ATA Hard Drives - Apple Support

     

    You are not using an ATA controller for a FireWire external drive, but I believe that 200GB volume-size limit still applies.  This LowEndMac article has more information

     

    http://lowendmac.com/2014/how-big-a-drive-does-mac-os-9-support/

     

    TB-sized hard drives were "fantasy land" back when Mac OS 9 was the latest and greatest.  Don't go crazy with the hard drive capacity, to use with an iMac G3, just because you can get a multi-TB hard drive these days.  The Mac OS 9 system, apps, and related data do not (usually) take up very much space, compared to Mac OS X.

     

    ALSO, to be bootable and accessible with Mac OS 9, the drive must have the Mac OS 9 driver installed.  This driver is at the drive level, not volume level.  There's an option to install it (a checkbox) in old versions of Disk Utility, when you partition or "erase" the drive.

  • by Niel,

    Niel Niel Mar 31, 2016 1:11 PM in response to Appleboy45
    Level 10 (311,939 points)
    Mar 31, 2016 1:11 PM in response to Appleboy45

    Yes. If you need to format the drive, you need to install Mac OS 9 drivers on it.

     

    (141117)