Mac os withouht the mac

[cleb]

So My girlfriends family wants their mac to be fixed and upgrade ect. The only problem is the fix it is to replace the drive. Which I can physically do fine. But the question is do you need another mac to make the install drive? Most things I look up for making the drive is "so you take your mac and....." So the base question is, will any ol' iso maker work? 

[Sauron]

Does the drive work at all? If so you can use acronis or something similar to make an image of it and slap it as-is on the new drive. If the drive is dead (aka you can't access it) then you do need a mac as far as I know. It's possible you could find already made images on some torrent sites (and it wouldn't be illegal in any way afaik since you'd be using it on a mac) though.

[cleb]

16 minutes ago, Sauron said:

Does the drive work at all? If so you can use acronis or something similar to make an image of it and slap it as-is on the new drive. If the drive is dead (aka you can't access it) then you do need a mac as far as I know. It's possible you could find already made images on some torrent sites (and it wouldn't be illegal in any way afaik since you'd be using it on a mac) though.

I actually just found something called Transmac which apparently can do that. 

[kirashi]

2 hours ago, cleb said:

So My girlfriends family wants there mac to be fixed and upgrade ect. The only problem is the fix it is to replace the drive. Which I can physically do fine. But the question is do you need another mac to make the install drive? Most things I look up for making the drive is "so you take your mac and....." So the base question is, will any ol' iso maker work? 

What Mac do they have? Either list it like "iMac4,1", provide me with the Serial number, or at the very least the Model/Part Number (A1234 or MD905LL/A).

[cleb]

4 minutes ago, kirashi said:

What Mac do they have? Either list it like "iMac4,1", provide me with the Serial number, or at the very least the Model/Part Number (A1234 or MD905LL/A).

Atm I don't have the model number. I actually agreed to do this through my gf over the phone and haven't started working on the other than that I am aware the drive is dead. I can tell you it's a 2007 imac but, as little information as that will give you, that's all I know atm. 

[cleb]

10 minutes ago, cleb said:

Atm I don't have the model number. I actually agreed to do this through my gf over the phone and haven't started working on the other than that I am aware the drive is dead. I can tell you it's a 2007 imac but, as little information as that will give you, that's all I know atm. 

 

14 minutes ago, kirashi said:

What Mac do they have? Either list it like "iMac4,1", provide me with the Serial number, or at the very least the Model/Part Number (A1234 or MD905LL/A).

At the most I can say Imac 7,1

[kirashi]

6 minutes ago, cleb said:

 

At the most I can say Imac 7,1

Helpful enough  I was checking to see if it had built-in recovery or not, and it appears to be tool old to have Internet Recovery.

You'll need to acquire a Mac OSX 10.5.8 or higher installation DVD or USB. You can make one from another Mac, or fart around with making one from Windows.

It's preferable to at least install 10.6.8 or higher because it has the App Store, making it easy to upgrade to 10.11 for them.

Of course, I wouldn't recommend running anything more current than 10.9 unless they've upgraded to the 6GB RAM that their iMac supports.

[cleb]

6 minutes ago, kirashi said:

Helpful enough  I was checking to see if it had built-in recovery or not, and it appears to be tool old to have Internet Recovery.

You'll need to acquire a Mac OSX 10.5.8 or higher installation DVD or USB. You can make one from another Mac, or fart around with making one from Windows.

It's preferable to at least install 10.6.8 or higher because it has the App Store, making it easy to upgrade to 10.11 for them.

Of course, I wouldn't recommend running anything more current than 10.9 unless they've upgraded to the 6GB RAM that their iMac supports.

I'll try farting around with windows loaders haha. But if I can find an older one cheap enough I'll give that a go. I was thinking I'd give them Mavericks but I can get them up to 4gb with what I have and was thinking that might be enough for the latest os. Unless you heavily disagree. 

[cleb]

Just now, cleb said:

I'll try farting around with windows loaders haha. But if I can find an older one cheap enough I'll give that a go. I was thinking I'd give them Mavericks but I get them up to 4gb and was thinking that might be enough for the latest os. Unless you heavily disagree. 

Also would you know if 800mhz ram will work for it as well? I know in most cases it'll take it or if for whatever reason it can't it'll clock it down. But again my familiarity with Macs is meh. 

[kirashi]

12 minutes ago, cleb said:

I'll try farting around with windows loaders haha. But if I can find an older one cheap enough I'll give that a go. I was thinking I'd give them Mavericks but I can get them up to 4gb with what I have and was thinking that might be enough for the latest os. Unless you heavily disagree. 

11 minutes ago, cleb said:

Also would you know if 800mhz ram will work for it as well? I know in most cases it'll take it or if for whatever reason it can't it'll clock it down. But again my familiarity with Macs is meh. 

Well, if they are basic users, they could get by with 4GB RAM on the latest OS. It's not that bad, unless they multitask heavily.

PC2-5300 RAM is what those iMacs come with, which is 667MHz, but I've upgraded then using 800MHz RAM before fine.

Just depends on how picky the motherboard is on boot whether it wants doubles of the same type and speed RAM or not.

 

[cleb]

8 minutes ago, kirashi said:

Well, if they are basic users, they could get by with 4GB RAM on the latest OS. It's not that bad, unless they multitask heavily.

PC2-5300 RAM is what those iMacs come with, which is 667MHz, but I've upgraded then using 800MHz RAM before fine.

Just depends on how picky the motherboard is on boot whether it wants doubles of the same type and speed RAM or not.

 

Very basic users. I'm sure they'll be fine.  I won't be mixing speeds so I'm sure then it'll be fine.  Thanks so much for the help!