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#1 2009-11-07 5:03 am
- geekette28
- Southpaw Extraordinare
- Registered: 2006-12-26
- Posts: 357
External hard drive to use as a boot disk for imac g5
Well, my iMac G5 is starting to show its age. Yesterday I got an 'invalid sibling link' error when I ran disk verify. Tried repairing the disk - that didn't work, so I simply erased the drive and reinstalled leopard. Don't worry all my important stuff is backed up. 
But I think it's just a matter of time before the disk fails again.
What I was thinking of doing was getting an external hard drive to use as a boot disk for my imac g5, cuz I just don't wanna spend $2000+ on a new mac (I also have a one year old macbook and i'm happy with using that as my primary machine).
If I do get an external hard drive to use as a boot disk, do you have any recommendations on type or size? I figure many of you have experience with this, so any advice would be appreciated. Thanks everybody.
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#2 2009-11-07 8:50 am
- wellfleation
- High on Life
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- Registered: 2001-11-13
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Re: External hard drive to use as a boot disk for imac g5
Just get any large FireWire drive and Carbon Copy Cloner to copy it to the drive and you'll be good to go. FW drives are a little more pricey than USB 2. Also, I have a 160GB FireWire/USB drive and it will not show with the rest my drives when connected via USB (shows instantly when connected via FW) which are attached to the same USB 2 hub.
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Stack it!#4 2009-11-07 1:08 pm
- sturner
- Royal High Poobah
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- From: Carrollton, TX USA
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Re: External hard drive to use as a boot disk for imac g5
Get the largest you can, obviously.
You can also look into replacing the internal drive, which would work just as well. You don't have to go through Apple, any Apple certified shop can do it. Best Buy, Frys, etc.
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#5 2009-11-07 1:21 pm
- D'Eyncourt
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Re: External hard drive to use as a boot disk for imac g5
Type (meaning make and model) is not particularly important. You don't want to get "Joe's hard drive" nor do you want to get an old model that had been sitting around for a while (mostly because it will have run out of its warranty). I've seen a lot of makes and models pass by my desk at work (I do computer support) and I can say that there aren't any particular makes or models to get or avoid with only a few notable (and almost all no longer made) exceptions like the old IBM "Deathstars."
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#6 2009-11-07 1:36 pm
- sturner
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Re: External hard drive to use as a boot disk for imac g5
Just go for a brand name that is recognized and stable. The warranties are what you want. They all come with at least a 1 year warranty. I've replaced a couple of drives that went bad, and the manufacturer was very accommodating.
I'm not dead yet.
There are 3 types of people, those who can count and those who can't.
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#7 2009-11-08 6:04 am
- geekette28
- Southpaw Extraordinare
- Registered: 2006-12-26
- Posts: 357
Re: External hard drive to use as a boot disk for imac g5
Thanks for all the input guys. Yeah, I was looking at the new iMacs and I felt that just replacing the hard drive and the optical superdrive on my iMac is the most cost effective thing to do. Why plunkdown $1200+ when I have a perfectly good G5 here - it just needs a new part or two.
I decided not to do an external hard drive boot disk since I saw the apple support pdfs on do it yourself part replacement - looks plenty easy. I'll do some more research and then choose parts. Anyway, wish me good hacking (or repairing or whatever I should call it).
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#8 2009-11-19 12:01 pm
- geekette28
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- Registered: 2006-12-26
- Posts: 357
Re: External hard drive to use as a boot disk for imac g5
UPDATE: Got my new hard drive yesterday. It's a seagate, with a 5 year warranty.
Just finished installing and partitioning it and am now reinstalling 10.5 (Leopard).
So it was really not that bad, installing parts myself. I've done RAM upgrades which are stupid easy, but this my first time replacing a hard drive. I feel good that it went so well.
Guess I'll go celebrate by having a cookie or two.
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#9 2009-11-19 1:15 pm
Re: External hard drive to use as a boot disk for imac g5
geekette28 wrote:
I'll go celebrate by having a cookie or two.
Reinstalling 10.5 (Leopard) will erase all your cookies.
Computers never do what you want them to do; only what you tell them to do.
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