[G4] Should I reformat?

[Larry Helms]

> 
> I just bought OSX 2.3, downloaded the 1.3.2 update, and ccc'd my drive
> to a external firewire drive.  When I boot from the firewire drive,
> everything looks exactly like booting from the internal drive.  I've
> tested applications; safari, mail, word etc. and everything works.  My
> question is can I reformat the internal drive or is OS X creating the
> illusion that the external drive looks and acts like the original
> internal.  I know this might sound a little silly, but I don't want to
> reformat the drive and find out the external drive only looked like it
> was running things.  The external drive is at the top of the drive
> list/ desktop but I can't eject the main drive "because it is in use"
> This makes me worry that it is still contributing to what I'm seeing
> and how its acting.  I don't want to loose what I have on my original
> drive.
> 
I wouldn't reformat... Until you're ABSOLUTELY SURE that it's booting
correctly from your external drive.  What I'd do... Is shutdown, open the
computer and disconnect the internal disk from the ribbon cable, close the
case, and then attempt to restart.  That way you're leaving everything as is
on the disk... And basically making it unavailable to the Mac - without
really damaging either.  If it doesn't work... All you then have to do is
reconnect the drive and you're back in business.