From Broken iMac 24" to Hackintosh

[Altobanor]

Hello all, this is my first post here. After 9 years and 2 iMacs (G5 & 24" Core2Duo), 3 Mac Mini's (G4, Core2Duo x2), 13" MBP (Core2Duo), 3 iPads, 6 iPods and One 20" Apple Display, I am FINALLY building a Hackintosh! I have had pretty good luck with my Apple products. Only my iMacs have had issues and that has pushed me to consider this option. It would have been nice to see Apple put out a mid-range system since taking out a 2nd mortgage for a Pro is not an option. Here is my immediate issue:

My 24" iMac Logic Board took a dive a few days ago. I was hoping it was the power supply but, no such luck. I have many years experience building PC's from scratch and I don't believe I will have much of a problem hardware wise. I will have my iMac 500GB hard drive that was just installed a few months back. Is it possible to take that HD and put it in my new Hackintosh, OS and all? I know the HD will work but I was hoping that I could keep the data intact and just continue on.... (I know, wishful thinking!). If not, no big deal, I will just have to move my Adobe applications from my old HD to a new one and use the old one for backup purposes. Just hoping to avoid the dreaded phone calls for activation heck with Adobe Support.

Thanks!

Brian

 

[Yannich]

Hey Do you want to build your hackintosh in your iMac 24" or into a new case ? A Hackintosh in an iMac Case would be awesome

 

[aaron97]

Hello all, this is my first post here. After 9 years and 2 iMacs (G5 & 24" Core2Duo), 3 Mac Mini's (G4, Core2Duo x2), 13" MBP (Core2Duo), 3 iPads, 6 iPods and One 20" Apple Display, I am FINALLY building a Hackintosh! I have had pretty good luck with my Apple products. Only my iMacs have had issues and that has pushed me to consider this option. It would have been nice to see Apple put out a mid-range system since taking out a 2nd mortgage for a Pro is not an option. Here is my immediate issue:

My 24" iMac Logic Board took a dive a few days ago. I was hoping it was the power supply but, no such luck. I have many years experience building PC's from scratch and I don't believe I will have much of a problem hardware wise. I will have my iMac 500GB hard drive that was just installed a few months back. Is it possible to take that HD and put it in my new Hackintosh, OS and all? I know the HD will work but I was hoping that I could keep the data intact and just continue on.... (I know, wishful thinking!). If not, no big deal, I will just have to move my Adobe applications from my old HD to a new one and use the old one for backup purposes. Just hoping to avoid the dreaded phone calls for activation heck with Adobe Support.

Thanks!

Brian

Although it is possible to install your old hard drive, you'd have better luck using a fresh install. If you want your old data, after a fresh install it lets you copy your old stuff over. That way you get a fresh install, but still have all your old files.

 

[Going Bald]

.... Is it possible to take that HD and put it in my new Hackintosh, OS and all?

Yes, you can. Once you have your build completed, boot with iBoot or iBoot Ivy Bridge if you use 7 series mainboard and IB CPU and once at the desktio run MultiBeast to install bootloader, audio and LAN drivers.