Gateway FX 6801-09H Hackintosh

[PallyRogers]

CLONING THE STARTUP DRIVE
With all the work I've put into the settings, fixes, updates, and everything else, earlier this morning panic set in. I really should make a clone of my startup drive. While I could go out and just buy a mac drive cloner, I'd like to be able to do it for free. There are several ways and that's what I'm going to post next. This would be specific to my GatewayFX 6801 but I'm confident it would apply across the board.

FREE WAY TO CLONE A MAC DRIVE
It's free but with that the convenience factor is substantially reduced compared to using Carbon Copy or Super Duper. I was able to use Clonezilla. I created a CD from the ISO and did a drive clone via the CLI. There is also a menu system. Here's the link to Clonezilla:
http://clonezilla.org/

MORE FREE WAYS TO CLONE A MAC DRIVE
I will add what I find here <---forget that. For now stick to Super Duper or Carbon Copy.

BACKING UP FILES
At some point we need to back up files. Below are some ways to do this for free.

Terminal
This one is 100% at least for making a backup of your user files as I don't believe it'll backup the the partition.
Launch the terminal and do this:
$ sudo ditto -V /Users/YourUserName /Volumes/TargetVolumeName/

Time Machine
Another way is using Time Machine and a USB stick with OSX installed on.​

 

[PallyRogers]

TIP: WHEN a MULTI-MONITOR SET UP FAILS
I got my Gateway FX 6801 running with 3 monitors.

Then my Hackintosh crashed. Big time. Along with it all my monitors were not being recognized by my computer. It just kept restarting.

After what seemed like too many hours I unplugged everything. I turned off the computer. Unplugged it from the wall. I waited about 5 minutes then started again.

I restarted with nv_disable = 1. After that, I switched it to use the NVIDIA drivers. Now here's the big trick, I went back into options and I unchecked the nvda_drv =1 so that it did not have a checkbox or set to true. It would seem that the NVIDIA drivers were already loaded. It would be great to know why this voodoo technique worked. (FYI: It's only voodoo to me because I don't know why it worked but it worked. If a kind soul could chime in a offer a possible hypothesis, that would be appreciated)

It worked and I was able to play around with Inkscape.

 

[PallyRogers]

INKSCAPE BLUES
I'm not sure if it's because I'm using a Hackintosh but when I launch Inkscape one of the panels is waaaay off to the other side and hidden behind a screen. I can't get to it.

Overall, most apps I've used are working just fine. You know, like it works on a real Mac

VIRUS PROTECTION
For anti-virus I am using ClamAV. Here's the link:
http://www.clamav.net/

Avast also has a free version:
https://www.avast.com/free-mac-security

 

[PallyRogers]

HOW TO ACCESS WINDOWS FILES FROM MAC
My Gateway FX 6801 Hackintosh is still working!

I got a dual boot working. Windows 10 is a such a different experience and is really really slow on my old PC, but it works. Some of the work I do using Windows 10 I wanted to access with my Hackintosh. For example, I wrote a bunch of Python apps in Windows I wanted access to it. What to do? I used Tuxera. It mounted the Windows drive and I'm able to use it on my Hackintosh. There is a trial version for download available at http://www.tuxera.com/products/tuxera-ntfs-for-mac/

I also tried Paragon but it was a nightmare and severely slowed my Hackintosh. On my iMac, Paragon worked fine and I don't know why.

 

[PallyRogers]

Well it's been several months and my Hackintosh is still working! As it uses an older processor it is much slower than my iMac. So I am looking to build one at some point this summer. So far, aside from a few start-up issues and the monitors losing their settings (which I think I know how to solve) it's been amazing. This community has been such a great resource and I wanted to say thank you! You guys are awesome