G3 system drive to new G4

This is a good idea to get everything working pretty quickly although the new G4 probably has a quicker drive and being new, is not fragmented like your old drive is. I would go thru the hassle myself, but I'm really anal.

Here's another thought. I don't believe that the installs need to be on the system drive. Just copy everything to the new drive but put your old drive in the g4 as well. This should work. Just remember not to dump that old drive

That would be a waste. The new dual 1 Ghz Macs have an ATA 100 main bus, and you might as well take advantage of it by having some new, fast, big ATA drives on it. In addition to the drive that comes with the new computer, install up to three additional Western Digital WD1200JB's (120 GB, 8 MB cache, 3 year warranty). They cost about $165 from the right etailers. Don't listen to the lazy sloth that recommended moving the old drive over. First of all, you want to keep OS X on the new machine too, possibly setting up a separate OS 9 partition. I've got my system drive divided into four partitions, with OSX and OS9 classic on the first partition, and just OS9 on the second partition. I keep all my audio software on the second partition, and boot from that one. This works great, and has been very reliable. Buying a new computer is THE time to clean your computer house. You want to do fresh installs on everything, and you want to scrutinize every version to either make sure it's the latest available, or the best choice for your configuration. Don't do any shortcuts here, or you'll pay for it later. You want your system drive to be new and fast, so the computer boots fast, and software loads fast. Also, considering the time it takes to configure a system, and the trouble caused when a drive goes down and loses authorizations, it makes a lot of sense to have a brand new drive. Lee Blaske

Produceher and Lee Great clarifying advice, Sound sense to use the new drives and use the upgrade as an opportunity to get eveything refreshed and optimized. thanks Renie