Is It suboptimal to put a system drive from one mac into another?

If anyone could answer these questions i'd be very grateful:

Is there anything machine-specific in a Snow Leopard install process that optimizes it to the specific mac the drive is in upon installation?

Are there known expected issues with swapping the system drive from one mac pro to another?


Background info:

I've purchased a 2009 12-core mac pro to replace my 2008 8-core.

I've swapped out the drive from the 2008 and put it in the 2009. It runs pretty well but has a few weird issues - more crashes and occasional hangs which i was not getting on the 2008.

Disk warrior shows no problems.

If I can't fix the issues i guess i'll do a fresh install...I'm just loathe to spend a day installing/ authorizing stuff it there is no good reason to have to.

Thanks!!

tomdrum said:

Is there anything machine-specific in a Snow Leopard install process that optimizes it to the specific mac the drive is in upon installation?

Click to expand...

There was a time years & years ago that this was the case (I'm talking many years). But I don't think that this is the case any more (and hasn't been for quite a while).

Only things I can think of are:

- the Snow Loepard install on the 2008 Mac Pro may not contain certain drivers (drivers for video cards for example). You could rerun the OS 10.6.8 "Combo Updater" to see if it helps:

http://support.apple.com/kb/dl1399

- there may be some sort of "gunk" installed (or has accumulated over time) on the 2008 Mac Pro drive that the 2009 Mac Pro has a problem with.

tomdrum said:

Background info:

I've purchased a 2009 12-core mac pro to replace my 2008 8-core.

I've swapped out the drive from the 2008 and put it in the 2009. It runs pretty well but has a few weird issues - more crashes and occasional hangs which i was not getting on the 2008.

Click to expand...

They are two different computer models...with different hardware...so it's not impossible for a 2009 Mac Pro to have "quirks" that weren't seen in a 2008 Mac Pro.

tomdrum said:

If I can't fix the issues i guess i'll do a fresh install...I'm just loathe to spend a day installing/ authorizing stuff it there is no good reason to have to.

Click to expand...

Don't spend a day doing this right away. Just do a fresh install of the OS (Snow Leopard I'm assuming) onto a empty drive from a retail install disk...and see if you get better stabiity. But rerunning the 10.6.8 combo update mentioned above may achieve the same thing.

Lastly...you could run the free maintenace app called Onyx...and see if it helps:

Titanium's Software • Index page

- Nick

THANK YOU!!!

Thanks so much for your detailed reply.

I never would have thought of rerunning the combo-updater...fingers crossed it might do the business!

tomdrum said:

I never would have thought of rerunning the combo-updater...fingers crossed it might do the business!

Click to expand...

It isn't a common thing to do...but we sometimes suggest it when the proper situation pops up.

Good luck,

- Nick

Am pretty sure that even the retail versions of OS X detect and then install the hardware drivers specific to each machine. The combo update may help, if whatever hardware drivers are causing the issue are replaced with updated drivers in the combo update.

Not sure I would even do the test. Creating a Time Machine backup, clean install of SL and restore - in under 2 hours you're back up and running knowing you've taken care of any lingering driver issues between the 2 models. This should let you know whether it's the OS install or actually some other issue for sure.

I would never move the OS partition from machine to machine unless they're they identical model.

+1 on using the OS 10.6.8 "Combo Updater"!!!