Got my big new hard drives in hand - Now, what don't I know?

Got my big new hard drives in hand - Now what?
Have 2 old iMacs that I need to upgrade with bigger HDD’s and then upgrade the OS. I am experienced with hard and software upgrades since MacSE days (got all the tutorials marked) but not so much with recent OS10 permutations. Certain that all this has been posted here numerous times, but quite tired of searching for it after a couple hours and have probably unnecessarilly confused and frightened myself in sorting through the scary posts. Perhaps its all in an FAQ at another site?
1. M9290LL/A G4 iMac 20” 1.25 Ghz 2GB RAM OS10.3.9
2. M9845LL/A G5 iMac 20” ALS 2.0 Ghz 2GB RAM OS10.4.11
Presuming that I would clean up the existing internal HDDs, install the new drives (1TB & 500GB) in their appropriate external enclosures, initialize them with the apropriate HFS (know I saw that here somewhere), drag and drop the existing internal HDD onto the new external drive, boot from the external HDD for an appropriate test period (all 5 family users) and only then install the new drives in the iMacs.
With the files and user settings safely backed up on the old HDDs in the external enclosures, I can safely attempt OS upgrading. Already have family packs of newer OS versions, just never desired the weeklong headache of reconfigging 5 users and the typical screaming lost settings sessions.
I am not looking at a clean system and software install because of all the user settings. We have a fortune in legacy PowerPC software, some of which never worked right on the G5 with 10.4, but Safari for 10.3 is now very unstable and I have printers with no 10.3 drivers available.
Questions:
1.What should I do to clean up the existing HDDs prior to copying over besides running Disk Utility. Didn’t Disk Utility. used to include a de-frag function? Hopefully there is shareware and this doesn’t require a $100 software suite.
2. Do I need special cloning software due to windows-like traps in OS10 or can I just copy the entire old drive, sludge and all?
3.What are the ultimate OS10 versions for these machines;
at what point am I installing lots of Intel code that simply slows these machines down or kludges up the legacy software?
4. What else did I forget to ask? What would the pros at my local mac shop charge me fortune to do?
Thanks

The prevailing answer to my posts is that I should either attempt a clean install and migration over using SD to clone copy the existing internal drive.
How good is the current migration experience? I've been doing OS upgrades since Mac SE days and never had a clean one in my life. Always lost the whole email folder or all the bookmarks or the address book files or the entire iTunes library or something that resulted in long hours of cursing and frustration. And that was with a single user.
And I know that these units will boot and be functional with upgrades to 10.4 and/or10.5. Unanswered is whether these computers will work faster or slower and more or less reliably?
Am not concerned with OS9 apps; have a couple old CRT iMac doorstops if the kids are overcome with a wave of nostalgia for Marathon or Pod Racer.
Does this or any other site maintain a master list of 10.4 / 10.5 software version compatibilty, or do I have to track down 50 different vendors' current websites?

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The new hard drive is in - now what?

Hi everyone,
Please bear with me. I've suddenly become possessed by the idea of taking apart a Mac and putting new stuff in there. I am a complete novice in this respect, but I figure everyone has to start somewhere, right?
I've got an iBook G3 Clamshell (300 MHz, 288 MB RAM) that I'd like to soup-up. It's currently got a 3 GB (867 MB available) hard drive and is running Panther 10.3.9. Eventually, once I work up the courage, I'm going to undertake the (apparently) monumental task of prying this thing apart and putting a new hard drive in there. I'm hoping to put an 80 GB hard drive in there and put Panther on it.
I've looked around on the Net for a post-hardware installation guide, but I can't seem to find anything that addresses my needs or speaks my limited tech language. If it would be possible for a Mac-savvy person on this board to walk me through the steps immediately following the installation of the hard drive, I'd be very grateful. I know that there are several things that need to be done - I want to make sure that I don't do them in the wrong order!
So, I've (incredibly) taken apart the iBook Clamshell, stuck a new hard drive in there, put everything back together, and I've got my black retail OS X Panther installation CD's ready... now what?
Issues that are of particular concern: formatting the hard drive. How do I do this?
Also: firmware. Do I need to update this? If so, do I do it before or after I format the hard drive? The iBook's current system profiler is quoting me a 4.1.7f4 figure for firmware. Will this change and have to be 'redone' after a new hard drive is put in?
Of course, there are probably a whole bunch of other issues I haven't even considered. What do you do to ensure the smoothest and most efficient installation of the OS?
Again, as I'm very new to this madness, I appreciate any advice or info you guys have to impart. Thank you!
PowerBook G4, iBook G3 Clamshell Mac OS X (10.3.9)

JJJJS,
I suggest you install OS 9 first anyway. By doing that you also ensure you install the OS 9 hardware drivers required for OS 9 native-boot. Your iBook originally shipped with OS 9 and therefore all firmware upgrades are OS 9 installers only. In order to apply a firmware upgrade you have to boot into OS 9 natively. Once you installed OS 9 and updated it to at least 9.2.1 (Mac OS 9: Available Updates) apply the firmware upgrade for your iBook: Mac OS X: Chart of Available Firmware Updates.
Regarding the boot-question: It actually does not matter how you do it. Turning power on will show the ? anyway. All you need is electricity to open the optical drive bay. Restart by presssing CTRL-Eject.

New hard drive...now what to do with iTunes/iPhone??

My hard drive (thanks, Mac/Apple!) crashed completely a couple months ago, and it's been that long since I've backed up my phone. After a scare tonight I realized I really need to do that...only my phone still thinks it's synced with the iTunes on the old hard drive. The iTunes on my new hard drive has none of the content that is currently on my phone.
What do I do?? How do I back it up without losing everything? Is that even possible? The crash happened in the middle of a backup, and I lost everything on my backup hard drive as well (so awesome). However, we still have our giant huge insane music library where most of the songs are...it would just take ages to go through it and try to figure out what I had in my library (the library is a mix of my husbands and my music). There is also new content that I want to add to my phone, but I can't see how to add that. I tried to manually manage the music and downloads, but in order to do that I have to accept an "erase and sync" which means I'll lose everything. I was able to transfer my iPhone purchases to the new iTunes.....
I have no idea where to go from here...

I have the same situation as largirl, and I'm dismayed to see that there has been no answer to her in seven months! I really don't want to lose the podcasts, music, and apps (and their data) that I have accumulated on the iPhone.
On a different thread (https://discussions.apple.com/message/8926954#8926954), I did find a helpful answer. Allan Sampson wrote:
Connect your iPhone and without syncing, at the iTunes menu bar go to File and select Transfer Purchases From - the name of your iPhone. Before doing so, you need to re-authorize your computer with your iTunes account with iTunes.
Allan's helpful suggestion is three years old, but fortunately, it still applies. If any Apple folks are reading this, please expand this command to let us copy everything from the iPhone to the Mac.
Message was edited by: goaliegeewhiz

I got new hard driver for my MacBook I don't have the cd but I do have flash drive that has the software I need help because when I turn on my laptop it shows me a file with question mark how can I install the software from the flash driver?

I got new hard driver for my MacBook I don't have the cd but I do have flash drive that has the software I need help because when I turn on my laptop it shows me a file with question mark how can I install the software from the flash driver?

Hold down the Option key while you boot your Mac. Then, it should show you a selection of devices. Click your flash drive and it will boot from that.

Help, just got a new hard drive installed and now my videos say, "a necessary data reference could not be found"

Help, just got a new hard drive installed and now my videos in iPhoto say, "a necessary data reference could not be found"

Not sure what happened but I was able to click on the movie, go to File then Reveal in Finder, then drag it to my desktop and then drag it back into iPhoto and it worked.

My hard drive crashed on my MacBook Pro crashed and I need to get my CS5 up and running on the new hard drive. I copied what I could onto an external hard drive but when I drag and drop I get directions to uninstall but the uninstall folder I have does sa

my hard drive crashed on my MacBook Pro crashed and I need to get my CS5 up and running on the new hard drive. I copied what I could onto an external hard drive but when I drag and drop I get directions to uninstall but the uninstall folder I have does says it is an alias that is no longer present. I get error 6. I would like to get my software up and running on the laptop again please

If you subscribed to iTunes match the songs are kept in icloud. If you didn't but you did save the actual iTunes library folder which should include the music, video, etc. you should be able to just drag this file back to your machine in the same place and when you open iTunes it will give you a chance to identify the iTunes library folder.
You can test this to find out if you saved the media files or not and don't need to attach your nano to do it.
You are correct that once you connect the nano it will clear the existing files from it and sync it with the new iTunes library.
If you don't have the media files i'm not sure if/how to get them back on a windows ipod. I have everything backed up regularly because of the horror stories I have seen & heard.

I had to have a new hard drive installed. Now programs load slowly and pinwheel spins a lot. Any suggestions?, I had to have a new hard drive installed. Now programs load slowly and pinwheel spins a lot. Any suggestions?

I had to have a new hard drive installed. Now programs load slowly and pinwheel spins a lot. Any suggestions?, I had to have a new hard drive installed. Now programs load slowly and pinwheel spins a lot. Any suggestions?

It's likely that the new drive isn't working, or it wasn't installed correctly, or you had some other hardware fault rather than a bad drive.

I have a powerbook G4 running OS X 10.5.8. I had a new hard drive installed and now cannot access my itunes. I do I get my itunes that I paid for??

I have a powerbook G4 running OS X 10.5.8. I had a new hard drive installed and now cannot access my itunes. I do I get my itunes that I purchased?

Hi,
Read this. http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2519
Jim

My computer recently had a new hard drive installed. Now the music I have added to itunes won't sync over to my ipod

My computer recently had a new hard drive installed. Now the music that I have added to itunes won't sync over to my ipod. I have the selections checked, but still no luck.

See Recover your iTunes library from your iPod or iOS device.
tt2

I just had a new hard drive installed and now my pages and numbers are missing... do I have to purchase those?

My hard drive died on my MacBook Pro. So the Apple store installed a new hard drive for me yesterday. Now I can't find Pages or Numbers at all. Do I have to purchase these? Thanks for the feedback!

Did you purchase them or did they come with your Mac?

Had to put new hard drive on computer now i can't find my music

my husband had to get new hard ware for computer now my music has been lost i reseted it and now i lost all of my music basiclly my computer is now new so all of my music is gone

Was there a question in there?

Successfully installed new internal drives...now what?

I have searched...I promise.
Most likely I am just to ignorant too figure this out.
I took delivery of my new MacPro yesterday as well as 8g of RAM from OWC and two extra 1TB drives from OWC.
Stock config is 2x3.0ghz quad/2x1g RAM/1TB HD.
I successfully added the two additional hard drives and the RAM...when I go to about this Mac, it does see 10gb of RAM and in further details, the new hard drives in 2 and 3 bays.
When I first powered up the Mac, it came up with an unrecognized drive screen and gave me several partition and RAID options. I didn't know what to choose, so I exited out and can't seem to find that screen:)
Ultimately, my plan is to have two drives for OSX and one for Windows. I have a retail version of Windows on me...and I don't knoow what to do next.
Can anyone lend a hand?
i would like the second and third drives to show up on my OSX desktop as Windows and OSX saved data.
Any help would be incredible!
Thanks
Jeremy
Message was edited by: akdj

Open the Disk Utility in the /Applications/Utilities/ folder and try setting up the drives there.
(31090)

HARD DRIVE CRASH: So now what?

My hard drive crashed in my PowerBook G4.
Good thing is that I had everything backed up in Time Capsule. (I believe).
I just put in a new hard drive- how do I get time capsule to put everything back?
Thanks,
-Allan

I just recently went through your scenario,
I pulled a 120 gig hard drive from a powerbook. Did Time Machine first to external drive. Installed a 320 gig hard drive in powerbook. Re-booted powerbook using Leopard install disc. Selected English.
Went to Disk Utility and formatted the new hard drive. Done ok. Selected from DU "restore using TM backup." Only problem the new hard drive was not recognized at this point for the TM restore. So I re-started the Leopard install disc once more and all went well.

Computer Hard Drive Crashed. Now What?

The hard drive on my computer crashed a couple weeks back. Now that it is now back in working order, is there anyway I can take the the songs off of my iPod in order to load them into iTunes? I tried with another iPod, and iTunes erased the songs that were on there.
I don't know if it makes a difference, but the system operates with Windows.
Thanks a lot!

Do you still have your installer DVD?
Reinstall iWork '08 and upgrade it to v3.03:
http://www.freeforum101.com/iworktipsntrick/viewtopic.php?t=432&mforum=iworktips ntrick
Then open your documents and Export them to Word .doc/x to open in Pages 5.2.
You can also ask Apple to supply you with iWork '09 so you can access your work.
If that is unsuccessful, since Pages 5.2 is a severe downgrade, missing 110 features, get the iWork '09 boxed set from Amazon for $19.99.
Peter

My macbook got a new hard drive yesterday and now iPhoto's not working...

I have everything backed up via time machine on an external drive. All of my photos show up in Images but won't load in iPhoto. My OS was updated to Lion 10.7.3; I used to be running OS X 10.6.2 so now everything's a little different. It tells me that I need to updgrade my libary, when I click to do that it tells me it can't open the current library using this version of iPhoto and makes me quit. Any ideas?

Run Software Update.

Got my big new hard drives in hand - Now, what don't I know?

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