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Leopard Upgrade Strategy (I know, I am late)

Dembo

Dembo

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jun 14, 2007
185
13
London, UK / Frankfurt, Germany
Dear all,

I am planning to upgrade my July/2007 (Santa Rosa & LED display) MBP to Leopard and put in a new 320GB hard disk (target date: next weekend). I have a Firewire case at hand for the current hard disk.

Initially I planned to:

- CCC/SuperDuper old HD to new HD in external case
- ensure that I can boot from external HD
- swap HDs
- upgrade to Leopard

I am now unsure about the "upgrade to Leopard" step. In the latest poll I could find most people voted for a clean install. I would've done the same a couple of years ago, however, as of now I cannot be bothered to reinstall everything.

I can see to ways to get out of this:

(a) just upgrade and don't think about it
(b) do a clean install and then use migration assistant to move over all documents, settings and applications from cloned HD

Will (b) even work? I never played around with the migration assistant... Is there anybody out there who upgraded along this path?

Cheers,
Dembo
 
Go for an archive/install. Most apps will make the transition without difficulty and it overcomes the potential gotchas with 'upgrades'
 
Do a clean install and manually move over files. I'm not particularly keen on Migration Assistant.
 
DO NOTHING ELSE OUTSIDE OF A FULL ERASE OF THE HARD DRIVE AND NEW INSTALL OF LEOPARD. TRUST ME. DO NOT DO ARCHIVE AND INSTALL OR UPGRADE UNLESS YOU WANT POTENTIAL ISSUES.

Sorry for the shouting but I had emphasize my point. You can't go wrong with erasing the old OS and installing the new one. Don't be lazy about re-installing apps. If you decide to cut corners you may end up spending more time fixing and then erasing and installing in the end.
 
****... doesn't sound to good... :(

With regards to re-installing existing apps: Would it be enough to just drag them from the old Applications folder (which should be on the external HD after the switch) to the new folder?
 
Dembo said:
****... doesn't sound to good... :(

With regards to re-installing existing apps: Would it be enough to just drag them from the old Applications folder (which should be on the external HD after the switch) to the new folder?
Click to expand...

You could do that.

I originally did an upgrade but still had some issues that existed under Tiger. After about a month I backed up everything and did a clean install. All the old issues went away.

Back to your apps question, I did exactly the same thing. Most everything worked except a few apps so I decided to reinstall from scratch just to be sure. I had upgraded so I actually used some old preference files but to be honest I don't like to do that. If you simply copy an app from a backup to your apps folder chances are it will work but that isn't a guarantee. Apps will recreate the pref file if you don't copy it. You'll just have to re-do all your preferences in each app.

To sum up all my hot air I would reinstall your apps unless you absolutely can't, such as you don't have the original software to do that. It really is not much work and then you will have current versions too.
 
Dembo said:
****... doesn't sound to good... :(

With regards to re-installing existing apps: Would it be enough to just drag them from the old Applications folder (which should be on the external HD after the switch) to the new folder?
Click to expand...

If it's something simple like Firefox, you might as well download the latest version, that way you're definitely up to date. You can always drag over the individual pref files/Application support files from your old install.

For larger apps, I'd recommend re-installing off the install media.

It might sound like a pain, but it's not really that bad. As HLdan said, it's better to start off fresh that do an archive/install and have some issues later on.
 
I also plan on getting Leopard soon... but I don't have an external HD.

Therefore it would probably be much, MUCH easier for me to do an archive and install. (interestingly, this site claims that an archive & install in OS X is similar to the clean installs of the olden days.

Anyway, if I do an archive and install, then I guess I could delete my cache files and stuff (Application caches, font caches, System caches, and kernel caches) with OnyX afterwards.
 
Thank you guys for all the input *sigh*

Looks like this one will be as painfull as a Windows upgrade, damn. I am still tempted to give the Migration Assistant a chance.

Most of the posts claim "issues" with their systems. Can somebody give me an example what to look for after I ran Migration Assistant? Since I'll keep my old HD as it was I still have the option to do the re-install of all apps.

Another question to the knowledgeable ones: As mentioned, I will perform a HD upgrade together with the Tiger -> Leopard upgrade. Can I just put in the new HD without cloning Tiger on it first and then install Leopard to the blank HD?

Cheers,
Dembo
 
I don't think you should be "afraid" of migration assistant.

I've had some experience with it :)

I used migration assistant to transfer files from my old G3 iMac to my iBook G4. Then when I got this intel iMac, I used migration assistant to transfer the files over to this computer. Then when I got my Macbook Pro, I used migration assistant to transfer the files over to that.

In summary.... G3 iMac -> iBook G4 -> intel iMac -> Macbook Pro
and everything's still intact :)

So while Migration Assistant probably isn't flawless, it's not that scary or anything.
 
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