If you buy a Mac Pro used, as I did, and it does not come with the original system discs, which mine did not, is there any way to get them? The person who sold me my machine does not have them, I can't find them on Ebay. As my Mac Pro is a 3,1, the original system discs would have been for Leopard and I am now running Lion, could I use them for anything?
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Original system discs MP 3,1
- Thread starter ashman70
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No. Unless you really want outdated iLife
All discs past the official restore OS versions will boot and run your Mac with all the tools etc. You do miss the HW test but whatever to that placebo pill.
If you really want them, call Apple. They'll send them to you. For free in some cases, but at the worst they'll charge $20 or so.
Since you're running Lion, it'd probably just be easier to create a Lion install disc in case you need a clean installation on a new hard drive in the future.
Since you're running Lion, it'd probably just be easier to create a Lion install disc in case you need a clean installation on a new hard drive in the future.
My question is the rhetorical answer. Leopard isn't the latest OS, it was released in 2007 so no, it's utterly useless.
If anything, creating a physical copy of your reguraly bought OS X Lion can be useful, for example, to perform tasks with Utility Disk on the booting partition, to reinstall the os (thus formatting) and so on.
I am going to go with "YES" you can.
Right now, your Mac can run the latest and greatest OS provided by Apple.
That won't always be the case.
Having the original restore disks means that you will NEVER be in a situation where you can't wipe the drive and restore the computer to working order.
As an example, I recently purchased a PowerPC G4 iMac. The owner didn't have the restore disks. I didn't know the admin password for the existing account. In this situation, the original restore disk would be useful.
It may not be useful now, bit it might be later.
You may not want the original disk, but you definitely want SOME way to install an Operating System. Lion, Snow Leopard, etc..