Switch Master Drive with Slave Drive

[Vlad]

Maybe I'm way off here but the way I understood the original post was that johntalin wanted to use his new hard drive as the startup drive. so Im confused as to what the problem is. (my dumb) I thought as long as he installed a system on the new drive he could use it to start off of. I he doesnt have a system on it, i believe he can copy any files he wants to save to cd or dvd then clean install a system. or clone his smaller drive to the new one which ever way works best for him. then reload the files off of the cd's then go to system prefs and pick the new drive for start up . if i'm wrong about that i'm sure some one will correct me.

 

[MacHeadCase]

Vlad if you have any hardware knowledge, it would be, I'm sure greatly appreciated. John is trying to add a slave hard drive to his original hard drive. If you read the info on the model he has (Power Mac G4 400MHz a.k.a. Sawtooth), it was pretty tough changing hard drives...

Read the whole thread, you will see the hurdles he has to go through at the moment. I'm not too good with this stuff.

 

[Vlad]

second attempt to post this. Just wanted to say I'm not a tech, I just was talking from what I've experienced. I've owned a few comps between my first (apple IIe) and the dual 1,25 gig that I own now, but the g4 400mhs isn't one of them. I just assumed that it was like my g4 that all you need to do is install the new drive and format, install system and choose the new drive as your start up in your system prefs. I've never had to mess with jumpers so I apologize for sticking my nose where it don't belong.

 

[MacHeadCase]

Oh no absolutely not! This isn't what I meant. Sorry if I wasn't clear and came off sounding like that.

It's good to bounce ideas off each other: sometimes it brings us to a solution, see? I have never changed a hard drive in my life! LOL

And from the diagrams for the jumpers, it looks pretty complicated.

 

[Vlad]

Thats what I hate about text hard to show feelings. hehe hope you didn't think I got offended. I wasn't . I've changed quiet a few drives and the hardest part to me was the physical installation. Unless someone know for sure I would still bet that if he took the drive with the jumpers in the ship position and installed a system on the drive it can be the startup drive with a click in the startup portion of the system prefs.

 

[MacHeadCase]

OK well I hope John comes back to read this, it would help him I think. Thanks! :girl:

 

[johntalin]

Maybe I'm way off here but the way I understood the original post was that johntalin wanted to use his new hard drive as the startup drive. so Im confused as to what the problem is. (my dumb) I thought as long as he installed a system on the new drive he could use it to start off of. I he doesnt have a system on it, i believe he can copy any files he wants to save to cd or dvd then clean install a system. or clone his smaller drive to the new one which ever way works best for him. then reload the files off of the cd's then go to system prefs and pick the new drive for start up . if i'm wrong about that i'm sure some one will correct me.

I will be back soon. But, just a quick note: My Tiger DVD kept spitting out since the very first OSX installation a couple of years ago. Since I could not install Tiger, I was trying to work around it via Carbon Clone, etc. I finally figured out how to keep Tiger DVD in the drive even after it kept spitting out during installation. What I did was, I kept pushing the DVD back into the drive and after a couple of tries, finally Tiger stayed in and I was able to do the OSX installation on the Slave HD2. All my posts so far were before I could do that.
I will post everything to make it clear for other people. Thanks again.

 

[johntalin]

Thanks everyone for the joined effort. I have always appreciated the idea exchange, because it may help in a different situation.

Right now, I have OS9 on Master HD1 and Slave HD2, and OSX on Master HD1 and Slave HD2. I can go to any of these HDs without any problem. I am still ironing some kinks out with transfering Bookmarks, Draft files, etc. And, my computer is now very slooooow! I may upgrade the CPU.

My main question about how to prevent the Master HD1 from losing more space remains. Right now, I have only 1.1GB left and I am not sure what's going to happen when I keep updating my System OS9 and OSX. COULD MASTER HD1 be "LOCKED" so that the software upgrades don't effect that drive? Or, do the upgrades only upgrade the main boot drive, in my case SLAVE HD2? If the answers are NO to both questions, then how can I prevent my Master from losing more space? Am I going to fry the Master HD when it runs out of all the space? I only have the two Systems and other bare minimums on it. It is really frustrating that I have to have this small HD as the Master.

I will post here my trials and errors, so someone else may benefit and save time in a similar situation.

When I started this thread, my Tiger DVD was spitting out and I could not install a new OSX System. I could not use the Disk Utility either. I will explain about my steps in a different post I had already started. I searched some other Mac forums regarding Tiger spitting, and to my surprise, I am not an isolated case.

Since I could not use Tiger DVD, I tried Carbon Copy Cloner to copy my HD1 to HD2. It worked fine, except that I could not boot from HD2. Then, I took this big detour.

I started entertaining different ideas. I thought, may be changing the jumper pins in the correct way could let my Slave HD2 be the main boot drive. I checked the Seagate Web site and there was a mention of Size Limitation Jumper Pin beside the Slave jumper pin. So, I tried that along with the Slave jumper position in a couple of different combinations. I also considered my Slave HD2 to be my only HD. But, the conclusion I arrived was that when G4 AGP manual says that Original Master HD always has to be the Master, it literraly means not only in two HDs situation, but also means that you cannot take out the orginal Master HD at all. I thought this was a big disappointment about my good old Mac. So, I settled for two HDs idea again.
Meantime, I tried the Tiger DVD again. Sometimes anger helps... I put it in the drive and it spitted out as usual, but this time I decided to shove it in right away while keeping my finger pressed on C key. Bingo! It worked. I immediately installed Tiger on the Slave HD2 and booted my computer from HD2 to repair HD1. All worked fine and all the error messages was gone from HD1. Then, I cloned HD1 to HD2 and I ended up with four System folders, which is OK.
Cloning HD1 to HD2, did not transfer all the settings. I am still working on them. I have two different user names for each HD. I don't know if this is OK. Some of the locked folders which were transferred from HD1 had to be unlocked in HD2. After the Carbon Copy transfer, the dates were all out of wack in a crazy way. Mac Janitor was very helpful in that respect.

A note about the Carbon Copy Cloner: To clone HD1 to HD2 you have to be in HD1 and vice versa.

Note to self: Always be patient with those death rolls. And, when the DVD does not want to stay in the drive, shove it back in.

 

[Vlad]

It seems like you have it pretty much worked it out. You asked about losing space on you original drive, as long as you startup with the new drive all upgrades to the system will be on your startup drive. There shouldn't be anything written to the old drive. If you have 4 systems on your new drive then your eating up a lot of space unnecessarily. I've never use a cloning prgm. so I don't know for sure but the way I understand it is all you needed to do was format the new drive then run the carbon copy.
If you installed a new system on the new drive, I wouldn't have bothered to clone. What I did on mine was copy the files I needed on to the new drive with a new system and then put aliases (shortcuts) to the applications I use in my dock. The applications that need something written to the prefs. will act as if it is the first time you used it. You may have to type in the keys again for prgms. like MS Office. Once you have done this the computer will use the applications off of your old drive and put the new files on your new drive. Basically I am lazy and didn't want to reinstall all of my applications and at the time I didn't think of a clone program. But I see no reason why if the computer sees your hard drive that you shouldn't be able to do a clone and have one system and a carbon of the first on the new drive. The issue with everything being slow may be from the fact that you are running a 160 gig drive at 128 gig (I don't know just a guess). My suggestion there would be, before you upgrade processors buy a 3rd driver card for your drive. They are cheap and you will get the full space of your drive.

 

[Vlad]

I should have proof read better sorry if its confusing

 

[Vlad]

Hi i just came across this in another post. May be another solution for get the max out of your drive. This is a commercial program so it cost but even if you don't buy it there is some useful info on there downloadable user guide. Personally I think I'd go with the driver card myself, but here it is http://www.speedtools.com/ATA6.shtml

 

[johntalin]

It seems like you have it pretty much worked it out. You asked about losing space on you original drive, as long as you startup with the new drive all upgrades to the system will be on your startup drive. There shouldn't be anything written to the old drive. If you have 4 systems on your new drive then your eating up a lot of space unnecessarily. I've never use a cloning prgm. so I don't know for sure but the way I understand it is all you needed to do was format the new drive then run the carbon copy.
If you installed a new system on the new drive, I wouldn't have bothered to clone. What I did on mine was copy the files I needed on to the new drive with a new system and then put aliases (shortcuts) to the applications I use in my dock. The applications that need something written to the prefs. will act as if it is the first time you used it. You may have to type in the keys again for prgms. like MS Office. Once you have done this the computer will use the applications off of your old drive and put the new files on your new drive. Basically I am lazy and didn't want to reinstall all of my applications and at the time I didn't think of a clone program. But I see no reason why if the computer sees your hard drive that you shouldn't be able to do a clone and have one system and a carbon of the first on the new drive. The issue with everything being slow may be from the fact that you are running a 160 gig drive at 128 gig (I don't know just a guess). My suggestion there would be, before you upgrade processors buy a 3rd driver card for your drive. They are cheap and you will get the full space of your drive.

My new drive is 250GB. I don't know if I will ever be able to use it for any other Mac. Maybe you can give me some suggestions. My computer has parallel cable and I found out recently that all new computers are going the way of serial connection. Maybe you can tell me what my choices could be if my new drive outlives my Mac.

Once I decide that I don't need my Master Drive, could OS9 and OSX be erased from the Master HD? If yes, would you know the reason why you have to have the old Master HD? If not, then that explains it.

The reason I cloned the old drive onto the new one is that when I got all excited about Tiger DVD working, I went ahead and installed it right away. But, I still wanted OS9 on the new drive, also. Because, some of the old OS9 Applications were also contributing to the Master to be filled up (I still need those for one reason or another for some old stuff). I was told (when I first upgraded to Tiger) that if you Erase and Install your whole system, you have to start building from OS9. Once Tiger was already installed onto this new drive, I decided that it is easier to add OS9 via cloning. It works fine. I did not even need to reinstall OS9 Applications, either.

I needed to set up a new Apple Mail again. Though, as soon as I did that, all the cloned Emails, Drafts, Mailboxes, etc. were transferred. I don't know if I could just copy them from my old drive, because once I switch to HD2, all HD1 Emails were locked. I could have changed ownership and unlock them, but I thought cloning was easier. Also, once you change ownership in HD2, when you need to go do something in the Apple Mail again in HD1, you needed to change the ownership again. This only applied to the transition period, but since I did not know 100% what I was doing, I just went the easy way.

Just a note: To copy old Safari Bookmarks you go to Master HD1 and Export Bookmarks. To Export Bookmarks, you go to Safari Preferences, click on the Bookmark Icon, go to File, Export Safari Bookmarks and save them on HD2 in a file named anything you want. Then, you switch to HD2, go to Safari Preferences, click on the Bookmark Icon, go to File, Import Safari Bookmarks. They are added to your Bookmark panel in a folder named "Imported..." Then, you can just moved them to your Bookmark Bar.

Thanks for all the help.

 

[johntalin]

Hi i just came across this in another post. May be another solution for get the max out of your drive. This is a commercial program so it cost but even if you don't buy it there is some useful info on there downloadable user guide. Personally I think I'd go with the driver card myself, but here it is http://www.speedtools.com/ATA6.shtml

Thanks for the link. I bookmarked it and I will read it.
May I ask the reason for your preference about the driver card. I am just learning... Could I add the driver card anytime? Will I need any back up done prior to that procedure?
I probably want to take a break from upgrades for now, though.
I will probably bother everyone again soon about the CPU upgrade. It is just driving me crazy how slow it is.
Thanks again.

 

[Vlad]

Macs are so user friendly I'm not quite sure how you made such a project out of this. hehe. Your email problems are lost on me. I have my email through my isp and don't use my address book, I keep all my important, sensitive info on a removable hard drive. (after part of a friends taxes showed up in my email ). Maybe someone else can help you there.
If I understood you right, you cloned after you install a system on the new drive, I think most of your problems can be fix by starting over. I know you don't want to hear it but I think your best bet is to reformat your new drive after you get a new driver card or the software fix. Then clone your old drive. If its done properly it should be ready to go. All your mail prefs should be identical to the old drive, and work as they did there.
I'm still confused as to what you mean by needing to keep the old master drive. If your Mac sees a drive and places it on the desktop and that drive has a system on it, it can be used as a startup drive. All the others are now slaves. This can be change anytime in the startup disk option in system prefs. Unless there is something different about your particular machine that I'm not aware of, this is how all macs work. To my knowledge once you change the start up drive you can use, remove, erase or ignore any hard drive other then the startup drive.
You asked why I prefer a card over the software. There is no real reason other than, if slot space isn't an issue. Then I like a hardware solution over software. It's totally based on my ignorance of things I can't put a screwdriver to. I'm not sure I was any help to you. Again, macs are so easy to work with its really hard for me to understand how it got so complicated. Good luck.

 

[johntalin]

Macs are so user friendly I'm not quite sure how you made such a project out of this. hehe. Your email problems are lost on me. I have my email through my isp and don't use my address book, I keep all my important, sensitive info on a removable hard drive. (after part of a friends taxes showed up in my email ). Maybe someone else can help you there.
If I understood you right, you cloned after you install a system on the new drive, I think most of your problems can be fix by starting over. I know you don't want to hear it but I think your best bet is to reformat your new drive after you get a new driver card or the software fix. Then clone your old drive. If its done properly it should be ready to go. All your mail prefs should be identical to the old drive, and work as they did there.
I'm still confused as to what you mean by needing to keep the old master drive. If your Mac sees a drive and places it on the desktop and that drive has a system on it, it can be used as a startup drive. All the others are now slaves. This can be change anytime in the startup disk option in system prefs. Unless there is something different about your particular machine that I'm not aware of, this is how all macs work. To my knowledge once you change the start up drive you can use, remove, erase or ignore any hard drive other then the startup drive.
You asked why I prefer a card over the software. There is no real reason other than, if slot space isn't an issue. Then I like a hardware solution over software. It's totally based on my ignorance of things I can't put a screwdriver to. I'm not sure I was any help to you. Again, macs are so easy to work with its really hard for me to understand how it got so complicated. Good luck.

You have been alot of help. Even if I start over with the new HD, I could not see the new HD on my Desktop right after installing Tiger. This why it has gotten so complicated. After I was able to install Tiger on HD2, I wanted HD2 to be my one and only Master Drive. In G4 AGP Sawtooth Manual, it does say that the original Master Drive always has to be the Master Drive. I thought may be this meant that HD1 needed to be the Master Drive in two HDs situation. So, I removed the HD1 and hooked up the HD2 only with only Tiger on it. I could not see the drive on the desktop and I could not boot my computer (I explained all these in my previous posts). I had to unplug my computer to get out of that situation. That's where all the jumper pins came into picture. MacHeadCase was trying to help me figure out how I can make HD2 my Master and only HD. In a different Mac, this could have worked, but I believe, I tried every possible combination with the jumper pins and I could not get it to work. The conclusion I came to is that I could not get my Mac work in a single Master HD situation with the new drive.
I would truly appreciate if you could help considering all these steps I had to take during my trial and error. I know that you have a G4, so maybe you can guess.
As far as the Apple Mail goes, I have two POP accounts in each drive. First, I thought I only have the two together on only HD2. After some more thinking, I realized that having two POP accounts was not the result of cloning, because I did not clone from HD2 to HD1, yet I have the POP account which was created while in HD2 pop up in HD1. I did set up my Mac Mail again in HD2 and I believe, this added the second POP account with all the other information the same as the first one. Like you would guess, the problem now is to make it back to only one POP. And, I am still working on it.
Thanks again.

 

[Vlad]

I think I understand what you are saying . I apologize for thinking it should have been easier. I've had several macs and didn't realize that the sawtooth was so different. I would have thought some in the forum would have had experience with the sawtooth and corrected me. Prior to this g4 I had 3 legacy macs and they were scsi drives but worked like I described earlier. In fact my first mac which was a mac II, I believe. (memory like a sieve) It would let you swap out a drive and switch start ups at will. So I assumed your mac would too. I know you explained it earlier but by the time I started reading this thread it had quite a bit in it already, and I was guilty of skimming to quickly and making assumptions. I know what you are doing is nothing new so I'm just sorry there wasn't anyone that could have helped and saved you some time. I wish you the best of luck with your mail account issue. I'm sure you'll work it out you seem very determined.

 

[johntalin]

I think I understand what you are saying . I apologize for thinking it should have been easier. I've had several macs and didn't realize that the sawtooth was so different. I would have thought some in the forum would have had experience with the sawtooth and corrected me. Prior to this g4 I had 3 legacy macs and they were scsi drives but worked like I described earlier. In fact my first mac which was a mac II, I believe. (memory like a sieve) It would let you swap out a drive and switch start ups at will. So I assumed your mac would too. I know you explained it earlier but by the time I started reading this thread it had quite a bit in it already, and I was guilty of skimming to quickly and making assumptions. I know what you are doing is nothing new so I'm just sorry there wasn't anyone that could have helped and saved you some time. I wish you the best of luck with your mail account issue. I'm sure you'll work it out you seem very determined.

As I said before, I don't mind the detours as long as I learn something from them. I have change my mind back and forth about a few things in the way of working things out, so that I would have an open mind about many things. I make notes all along, so I would not get confused (most of the time). Note to self: Stay calm, think positive and let those death rolls work themselves out (sometimes they take along time, but the alternative could be worse).
After all, having two HDs is a big advantage. Since my Tiger DVD is not very reliable, I have already used HD2 to repair HD1 and vice versa. When I did those forced shut downs, I damaged the HD1. Then, in another situation, I had to repair HD2 using HD1. I also have an external HD to back up important files and photos.
As of now, I will use my email account directly from the server while I continue to work on Apple Mail. I can still get my emails when I switch to HD1. So, it is a big puzzlement. I know for sure that it is an Apple Mail issue and not the server or the HDs.
Thanks.
I hope some other people use this tread to solve their problem.

:yinyang:

 

[johntalin]

I like to add this diagram which I downloaded from Seagate Web page while trouble shooting with them. This picture shows the jumper pin configurations.
I am really disappointed that I have this limitation, because my original HD is only 10GB, and now I realize that was a bad choice back then.

A note about the Jumper Pins: 5&6 position on a 6 pin drive would be just like 7&8 position on a 8 pin drive. Meaning, both are far left positions for Master HD.
3&4 position on a 6 pin drive would be just like 5&6 position on a 8 pin drive. Meaning, both are second from left for Slave HD. Drive pins are counted from right to left.

 

[Vlad]

It seems that the limitation is that particular model. The more I read about it the more I dislike it. It seems that its not a true g4 to start with. Before you dump anymore money into upgrading something that you don't get much more performance out off. At least that's what I'm reading. You may want to check into some of the 700 to 1000 meg g4s. find one that suits your needs and then track them on ebay for a while. With patients you can find something nice at a bargin price. You need to research and track the pricing for a while before you buy. I've seen some really nice quicksilver g4s sell reasonably. and I also saw just the opposite. I saw 23 people bid on a mini mac that sells new for $574 and they bid the price up to $623. go figure

feel free to pm me to update me on your progress. I would be interested how things work out for you.

 

[Vlad]

Well, I was gonna walk away from this one, but I never could leave as sleeping dog alone. hehe This is what I found out. That your computer needs do see a drive of 120 gigs or less as the main drive. If you install the driver card or software you can use the drive you have as main drive and will be able to remove the original on if you wish. So the way I see it is that you have a few choices. You can either (1) buy a new drive 120 gigs or less and use it as your main drive,(2) buy the proper driver card for your computer,(3) partition your drive to 120 max partitions, (4) or which my source didn't mention is use the software to let it see the 250gig drive. It seem that the sawtooth works just like the rest of the macs it is just limited buy the size of the drive, which can be addressed with pci card or software. I know compared to what you had in there in the first place the 135 gigs looked good but it was a shame to waste 165 gigs.