Need help installing Tiger OSX to external hard drive

Joined
Dec 5, 2009
Messages
1
Reaction score
0
Points
1
I have an iMac g5 with a 232gb internal hard drive. its the white one not the new silver model. Recently i thought that the internal crashed because one day when i booted my computer it just went to a blue screen and froze there. So i took it to the store and the a "genius" told me that it crashed and he could try reformatting the drive to see if that fixed it, but it didnt at the store. so he told me to get an external drive and i could install Tiger OSx on it and use it as my main drive. So i bought a Lacie rugged 500gb drive with Firewire 400/800. my iMac only has the 400 plug so thats what i hooked it up with. Now when i went to try to do all of this, i put my Install disk in and when i went to pick my drive to install it to for some reason the internal was recogonized and the external had a red marker on it and it says i can not install to this volume. So i reinstalled the OSx to my internal. When i updated the tiger to 10.4.11. My computer froze and didnt work again. I erased the internal again and now i want to install the tiger to the external and use it as my main drive because there is obviously something wrong with my internal. How do i go about getting this done? Why does the external say i cannot install OsX to this volume?

Thanks for your help
 

Slydude

Well-known member
Staff member
Moderator
Joined
Nov 15, 2009
Messages
17,596
Reaction score
1,072
Points
113
Location
North Louisiana, USA
Your Mac's Specs
M1 MacMini 16 GB - Ventura, iPhone 14 Pro Max, 2015 iMac 16 GB Monterey
Check that disc. If I remember correctly there were two different versions of the Tiger disc. One was a full install disc. The other was an "upgrade" disc that required OS X 103 (a.k.a Panther) be installed first. If you have the upgrade disc that might be the problem.
 
Joined
Mar 27, 2009
Messages
2,132
Reaction score
63
Points
48
Location
Lincoln Nebraska
Your Mac's Specs
late 08 macbook 2.0 4gig 320hdd10.7.3 32 gig iPhone 4s
Sounds like a format issue with the new ex-hdd Ill bet it came formatted as NTFS.

Clay
 

dtravis7


Retired Staff
Joined
Jan 4, 2005
Messages
30,133
Reaction score
703
Points
113
Location
Modesto, Ca.
Your Mac's Specs
MacMini M-1 MacOS Monterey, iMac 2010 27"Quad I7 , MBPLate2011, iPad Pro10.5", iPhoneSE
Is this the Tiger DVD that came with your iMac G5? I own the 20" iMac G5 2.1 Ghz with iSight camera. 250GB internal.

If the above is true, boot up with the OSX DVD that came with your machine. When you get to the installer, look up top for the utilities menu and click on it and open Disk Utility. You will want to go to the partition tab and click where it says Current and then on 1 new. Also click advanced and be sure it's set to Apple Partition Map. Hit apply. Be sure you have selected your external drive first.

Then the external should not have the red line through it. I did what you are doing but not because my 250 GB SATA internal was dead. I just wanted to see how the original Tiger install that came with the iMac worked Speed wise compared to 10.5.8 Leopard. I have 10.5 on the internal and 10.4 on the external.
 

Shop Amazon


Shop for your Apple, Mac, iPhone and other computer products on Amazon.
We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon and affiliated sites.
Top