Disk Utilities Question–How to Repair the Boot Drive

[Jeff Carpenter]

Put your OS CD in the computer and restart holding the “C” key. Run disk utility from the CD. This will let you do whatever you need to to the boot drive.

[John Davidson]

And, if you’ve lost your Boot CD, put the G4 in target mode whilst connected to another mac, then run disk util form that other mac.

Learned that last month. Totally worked.

John Davidson____ writer | producer | director____https://www.magicfeather.tv

[Toruwatanabe]

OK, is there a problem if my boot CD is an earlier OS than the one I’m running on my curretn boot drive? My boot CD is a version of Panther but I have Tiger installed.

[Toruwatanabe]

Well, I know this is basic stuff here. I’m trying to restart with “C” down, running my original install disk for my G4 (OSX10.3 on the cd?), and the G4 actually has 10.4.9 installed. It’s apparently not booting of the CD, keeps telling me I need to restart the computer. WHat’s my next step?

[Gary Milligan]

I don’t think it should be a problem to start from an earlier OS, but others may know better than I. Maybe it depends on what repairs are necessary, I don’t know. As for not being able to start using the disk – if you have an external drive connected via firewire, and it has enough free space, you could install Panther onto that and then choose that as the start-up disk (using “Start-up Disk” in system preferences), repair Tiger as needed, and then re-start with Tiger. Once you get things sorted out, use something like Carbon Copy Cloner (free) to regularily back-up your boot drive for situations like this. Works for me. As always, if you have important, must-have data on the external drive you’re installing to, make a copy of it elsewhere as a precaution. Hope this helps.

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[Gary Milligan] “I don’t think it should be a problem to start from an earlier OS”

It actually can cause problems especially if you repair disc permissions for it.

[13]

[ToruWatanabe] “OK, is there a problem if my boot CD is an earlier OS than the one I’m running on my curretn boot drive? My boot CD is a version of Panther but I have Tiger installed.”

Well you had to have a Tiger disk to install Tiger. So ether you lost your disk or you never had one. If it is the latter then go and actually buy one. How can you expect help on software that you didn’t actually buy. If you lost your disks then you should start looking and if you cant find then you will need to purchase new ones.

[Gary Milligan]

I stand corrected… as I also said, “others may know better than I”. I appreciate the good information.

[Toruwatanabe]

Ah, yes this was a legitimate disk install, and the disks were actually lost along with several other items during a move nearly 6 months ago (this may be partly to blame for the delinquent repair to the boot drive). Understandably, I am seeking to avoid additional expense on general principle, as it is easy to overspend and lose one’s way in the realm of technology; hence I was attempting to make do with what I had. I’m a loyal Apple person for over ten years now, have spent somewhere near to $7000 on Apple products so far and find your abrupt tone to be surprising.

[13]

$129 is a small price to pay, its much cheeper then if you had to buy a copy of windows again.