question about switching hard drive from iMac 333 to iMac 450mhz

You should use something like Carbon Copy Cloner to copy your disk - with OS 9 a simple copy will work but I don't think you can do that with X.

Thanks Mike but I guess I wasn't clear. I don't want to copy anything. I "want" to use the drive from the 333 imac because it is newer and larger.

I want to swap the drives not the info. So my question is, if I do this will I have boot problems?

In other words booting a 450mhz slot loader with a hard drive from a 333mhz tray loader (but both iMacs).

And when I say booting, I mean booting in OS 9 and in OS X.

Thanks.

You will likely have to go set the Startup Disk on the first boot, but AFAIK as long as the ROM file is in place it should be fine.

The one gotchya, really, is a 450Mhz iMac doesn't have the annoying 8GB partition limitation for booting OS X, so you'll probably want to repartition it and reinstall anyway.

--Peace

Yes that's right. I forgot all about that.

Ok so than that leads to a new question. Where online do you guys buy your internal hard drives. I used to just get them at Staples but lately all they seem to have is 200-300gb drives. I don't want to spend that much money and even more important what is the brand of choice these days. I am not at all happy with Maxtor.

Thanks!!

I've had good luck with Seagate and Western Digital.

For buying, I've twice ordered from NCIX, and they have a U.S. online branch.

You won't find many new drives with much less capacity than you mention, though NCIX did have at least one 80GB IDE listed for $45. I'm sure they're still around at other online vendors as well. Thing is, the price difference between an 80gb drive and one double that capacity isn't that much.

Drives are one thing I won't buy from auction sites.

cant forget newegg...

Funny thing that, normally I agree, but I've bought all my SCSI server-class drives (what run 24/7/365, all of 'em Seagates BTW) from eBay (perhaps 25 over the last 8 years) and have only ever had one bum drive, promptly replaced by the seller. Server-class SCSI drives are hellaciously expensive from 'normal' vendors and can be dirt cheap on eBay.

I reckon it's like all things eBay, buy carefully and ye shall have a decent experience.

For new ATA and SATA drives, I recommend only Seagate, for the simplest reason that they offer a 5 year no-hassle-replacement warranty. As ya'll may know, some makers put you through heckity-heck to get an RMA and replacement drive, but Seagate (and IBM, back when they were IBM) always made it the easiest. Made me a devoted customer they did.

My fave vendors include OWC, newegg and zipzoomfly.

dan k

Thanks Dan and everyone else that chimed in. I appreciate it. Off to buy a Seagate.