Booting From an Old PC Drive

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Hello,

I am migrating my parents to my old MacPro running 10.5. They were previously using a Dell Inspiron. I thought that installing the drive in the MacPro would create a startup disk for them that would then be bootable from System Preferences, but while the drive is recognized, it is not an eligible startup drive.

I've never used Windows on a Mac before, and I am looking for the easiest way to get the drive to be bootable. Thoughts?

Thanks.
 

chscag

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Welcome to the Mac forums.

Obviously, a Dell hard drive that's very likely formatted to NTFS is not going to work in your Mac Pro. It needs to be reformatted to the Mac file system, OS X installed on it, and then it should work to boot the Pro.
 
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I think the OP is try to run Windows alongside OSX, happy to be corrected if this isn't the case.

Unfortunately you can't just drop the disk in and expect it to work, for a few reasons (some or all may apply in this case):
- You haven't been through the bootcamp assistant. OSX has no idea there's a Windows installation present.
- The install of Windows you have there has no drivers for your Mac Pro installed
- the instance of Windows you have is not a full retail version if it came bundled with the Dell PC
- The version of Windows may or may not be compatible with your Mac Pro - Boot Camp: System requirements for Microsoft Windows operating systems

The best thing to do, if you need to dual boot to Windows, is to use the Bootcamp Assistant, use a full retail copy of Windows (appropriate to your Mac), install the drivers then migrate the data/.settings from the dell install across to the new one
 

Slydude

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When I read this I got the impression that the OP wanted to run Windows only on the Mac hardware. In either case the comments you're right about the issues involved.
 

dtravis7


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Also it needs an EFI boot loader. No Intel Mac will boot without that. If you want Windows on that machine use Bootcamp.
 
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Thank you all. I am interested in being able to run both OS's, so your advice has been very helpful. Thanks again!
 

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