Replacing Master/Boot Drive

[mintlivedotcom]

I just received a WD Raptor hard drive to replace the original hard drive in my G5. The original drive will be the slave/secondary drive. I have a couple of external drives to help out, but I am not sure how to go about replacing the master drive (I have replaced slaves before).

Also, it is not a retail kit, so I am not sure what I need to buy before attempting this great feat.

Any advice? Can I clone the original drive?

 

[mduser63]

I'm assuming you've currently only got one drive installed (the boot drive). If not, you might want to remove the second (non-boot drive temporarily). Install the new drive in the bottom slot (nothing extra is required, necessary hardware is inside the Mac already, see the manual for details). Next, download Carbon Copy Cloner (which is free), and use it to clone the boot drive to the new drive. Set your startup disk to the new drive in System Preferences. Restart the machine. Now you can format the original boot drive with Disk Utility to erase it. IIRC, SATA drives don't have master/slave jumpers, and in any case, that's irrelevant on a Mac because you set the startup drive in system preferences, it's not a matter of which drive is "master" and which is "slave." Good luck, and I hope this was helpful.

 

[mintlivedotcom]

Very helpful! Thanks!