Can I use my 1tb hard drive from my iMac in my Hack Pro?

[tjjensen]

My iMac is dead. Screen gone. Can I use my 1tb hard drive from it and install it in a new hack pro build and just use iboot and/or multibeast to get it running? I buy the family packs of all apple programs like SL and Iworks and iLife. And have alot of programs already installed. I could do a clean install of all the programs again but then would have to update them all again and copy tons of data and pics and music. I'm waiting for my parts to come in and figured I'd ask now. Building tony's build #3 but with 16gb and gigabyte hd 6870 card. In a Mac pro case. Please tell me how I can use my imac's drive.

 

[SnapMan]

Snow Leopard installs on Macs from the factory don't necessarily support any hardware other than what was on the machine it was shipped with.

That is why the grey restore disks cannot be used to install on any computer other than the model(s) listed on the DVD.

It is highly suggested that you back up all your files (data particularly) before installing a new OS, 1 TB drives are cheap and can be set up as a Time Machine disk.

You could try to run MultiBeast on your existing iMac installation, but unless you installed from the retail disk (with picture of the Snow Leopard on it) there is a good chance it isn't going to work.

Of course the SATA HDD is perfectly compatible hardware-wise if you want to use it....perhaps depending on how much stuff you have on it, it would make sense to add a new partition and install SL for the new computer on there, leaving all your data and apps on the other partition, then, after the new OS is 100% working, copy over all the programs.

 

[tjjensen]

Snapman thx for the quick response to my query. I have upgraded to lion on the iMac before the screen broke. Prior to lion, I was running SL that was installed off a retail disk. When I bought my Mac in 2007 it came with leopard from factory. So seeing that my SL and Lion were both retail purchases, will I be able to just install the drive in my build and just run multibeast? My iMac came with a 320gb and it died a year ago and I replaced back then with the 1tb drive.

 

[Max91]

I know you guys are a little more hip to this stuff than me, but here's my thought.

create a new build with a new HD. Use Migrate to get your stuff off the iMac drive.

I did this from my original SL drive and it worked perfect.

 

[SnapMan]

Okay, you installed either Snow Leopard or Lion from retail to work on a genuine Mac. To make it work on non-Apple hardware you need to install Chimera or Chameleon and an Extra folder with kexts for non-Apple specific hardware and a DSDT for your board if there is one.

You can't as of yet boot Lion from iBoot and you don't have Chimera or the Extra folder (which includes FakeSMC, necessary to boot) so the problem is really can you get access to your HDD to add the necessary files and hence make it bootable?

If you have another Mac you can get access to for a bit, you could unplug all other HDDs and startup using your drive, run MultiBeast, that might work okay.

If you have access to a non-Apple computer, you might find yourself in the chicken/egg problem:

LION: you can't boot to install the necessary files from either iBoot or the unpatched OS and you can't start without them.

SNOW LEOPARD: you could try an iBoot startup and see if you can get into your installation to run MultiBeast.

I think if it were me, I wouldn't take more than a few hours fooling with it before I just started from scratch. One idea is to make a new small partition and install 10.6.7 (10.6.8 is a pain), patch so it is self-booting and everything works and then run XMove on your existing Lion download to create an installer.