[G4] stuck and need to upgrade-resend, last got sent back

[John Baltutis]

On 01/16/07, Marla <mitchnickpictures at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> I have a G4 dual 450, with over 800MB SDRam but an old
> 28Gig hardrive that is beginning to show it's years...
>
> I need to upgrade my firmware and OS, desperately, but
> I am caught between a rock and a hard place: I
> recently (egad) experienced a drive error/failure that
> was repaired -for the time being- by the fabulous one
> and only Disk Warrior.
>
> The technician who supervised the repair told me that
> he gives my old drive "about 2 months." So I'd like to
> replace it with a new internal drive. But what about
> my software? He also said that you can't always get
> all the permissions and that my old software would not
> necessarily transfer over. IS THIS TRUE?

No. Carbon Copy Cloner (free to those in the educational fiels, donation-ware
otherwise), SuperDuper! (~$28 USD), etc. can make a bootable clone to the new
HD. Pop it into the second HD slot (see your Setting up Manual
<http://search.info.apple.com/?search=Go&lr=lang_en&kword=&type=kmanual&newstype=&q=g4%20setting%20up>
for the details), after changing the jumper settings to slave). Use System
Prefs->Startup Disk->select the clone, restart, and ensure that it looks and
feels like the original. Remove both HDs, change the jumper settings on the new
one to master, put it where the original one was, and press on. BTW, why don't
you get two 90-150 GB HDs (format max is 128 GB) while you're at it, and never
want for disk storage.

>
> I called sales at Tekserve and they said no problem,
> for $100 on top of the drive price they will transfer
> my existing software over. But is this person missing
> some subtler sense of what can go awry?

They're robbers. Do it yourself and learn how to make bootable backups (clones).