Question about upgrading from OSX 10.2.8 to Tiger

thomasp said:

Hi,

I've heard that there are different ways to install Tiger on a Mac, if there's an older OS already installed.

We want to upgrade our Dual 867MHz G4 from OSX 10.2.8 to Tiger, and we have ordered the Tiger box (and DVD 😉 ) off Amazon.co.uk.

Which is the best installation method to use, which won't result in having to totally reformat the hard disk (we've just installed Photoshop CS2.....)?


Thanks for the help 🙂

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This is just my humble opinion. This is the proceedure I use. I've tried others and had issues. I believe if you follow this proceedure there's less likelyhood of problems overall.

Here goes:

get "Cocktail" or "Onyx" (I prefer Cocktail)...run all the maintainance scripts. Make sure you repair "permissions".

Journal the drive using Cocktail/Onyx.

Restart the computer.

If you have a copy of "Disk Warrior", Boot from the DW CD and Optimize the disk. If you don't have "Disk Warrior", run "fsck -f" ( command-s ) after the boot chime.

If "fsck" returns a repair run it until it return "OK" then type "reboot".

Insert the Install DVD for Tiger and double click on the installer icon.

Run upgrade.


restart

Run Software Update from the Apple Menu until no more updates are required.


🙄

Personally, I would strongly advise against doing an "Upgrade" installation. Especially in this case. There's too many things that can go wrong, especially when you are skipping a whole major version of the OS (Panther). Too many things may end up in the wrong place, left over from the old OS and screwing up the new one. I've seen it happen so many times. I know people who do Upgrade with no problems, but in my experience that's the exception.

I would do the "Archive & Install" option. This truly gives you the best of both worlds - you get a clean system with no cruft from the old version, but you keep all your data and settings intact. This method will move your old system to a "Previous Systems" folder, then essentially do a clean install, then move all your personal data and third party apps back to the new system. Make sure you check the option to preserve users and network settings.

One caveat - using Archive & Install, you'll probably have to reinstall Photoshop because I believe it places some files outside the Applications folder, which don't automatically get moved over to the new system. But that shouldn't be too hard, and I feel it's a small price to pay for a much more stable system in the end.

Just my opinion. 😉

P.S. The suggestion above to use DiskWarrior before any installation is excellent. 😎

thomasp said:

If I use the 'Archive & Install', what will happen if I try to run CS2 without reinstalling it? Will it just refuse to run?

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A little googling found the answer. 😉

http://www.tow.com/2005/05/13/tiger-archive-and-install-and-photoshop/

In particular, take a look at the third response - that appears to tell you exactly what files to copy over and where to put them.

The computer has two internal HD's (one on each bus) and an external (but nearly full) FireWire hard drive. Since there are a lot of important documents on the computer, would it be safe to move all the files to the spare internal HD, or would it be better to move stuff to the FW HD, if I do the Archive & Install installation?

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The Archive & Install should preserve all of your data without any need to back it up. This has always been my experience when upgrading several different computers.

HOWEVER. 😀 If you are paranoid like me about your data, you'll want to back it up anyway, just in case. Never hurts to do so. In that case, you should be fine copying things to the spare internal drive, just as a safety measure. You shouldn't need to restore anything from that backup, but it's definitely nice to have the extra peace of mind.

Hope this helped.