best option when upgrading to Leopard??

[AeroBar]

hi,

I was wondering which is best when upgrading from Tiger to Leopard:-

*upgrade over Tiger, keeping settings and files

or

*the erase and install method

cheers

if I choose the "erase and install" option, what affect does that have on my e-mail?

thats all saved on MobileMe, isn't it? will my mail app automatically "import" from MobileMe

 

[åidån]

Do you have a Leopard disc? If not, wait for Snow Leopard. Not long to wait now either…

 

[DAMNiatx]

if I choose the "erase and install" option, what affect does that have on my e-mail?

thats all saved on MobileMe, isn't it? will my mail app automatically "import" from MobileMe

yes, mail app will download it again.

 

[AeroBar]

Do you have a Leopard disc? If not, wait for Snow Leopard. Not long to wait now either…

I've received advice here before that it's best to go with Leopard until Snow Leopard works out the bugs.

yes, mail app will download it again.

thanks

 

[eawmp1]

I've received advice here before that it's best to go with Leopard until Snow Leopard works out the bugs.

If you have an Intel Mac, that advice is WRONG. If you wish to shell out full retail price of Leopard, the upgrade to Snow Leopard, fine by me. You are assuming that SL, which is an evolution of Leopard, not revolution (some would argue this), and will be SO buggy you can't handle it. If you are so concerned about the upgrade from Tiger to Leopard, you will be anxious again going from Leopard to SL. Just be anxious once.

OBTW - as Leopard/SL, backup everything (clone to external HD with CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper) so if you want you can boot back into Tiger. Then Erase and Install your new software. Copy back over everything you want manually/reinstall applications. I've found after long periods with an computer/OS, a move is a great time to do some spring cleaning.

 

[AeroBar]

If you have an Intel Mac, that advice is WRONG. If you wish to shell out full retail price of Leopard, the upgrade to Snow Leopard, fine by me. You are assuming that SL, which is an evolution of Leopard, not revolution (some would argue this), and will be SO buggy you can't handle it. If you are so concerned about the upgrade from Tiger to Leopard, you will be anxious again going from Leopard to SL. Just be anxious once.

OBTW - as Leopard/SL, backup everything (clone to external HD with CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper) so if you want you can boot back into Tiger. Then Erase and Install your new software. Copy back over everything you want manually/reinstall applications. I've found after long periods with an computer/OS, a move is a great time to do some spring cleaning.

eawmp1, thanks for the advice on which method to use.

however, I would like to ask where you got the bizarre notion that I was anxious?? you want to work on your mind reading!!

I feel much better though that I have your permission "to shell out" my money!! Thanks. Seriously!!!

 

[clevin]

erase and install

upgrade often produce unsolvable problems here and there, quite annoy.

I dont know if waiting for SL is necessarily a good idea, on one hand, everybody saying SL is a better upgrade than leopard, on the other hand, apple's every piece of new OS have been needing 6 months and 2-3 patches to get most of the stuff right.

Your call.

 

[dbwie]

what I did

1) Make a clone of my old system to a backup drive using SuperDuper
2) Do a fresh install of Leopard on the new system, run software update to update the OS with all of the latest security patches, etc.
3) Install all 3rd party apps from their original install discs, and get all of the updates and patches for them (this gives you the opportunity to leave out some old apps you don't use, or those that won't run on Leopard)
4) Use the "migration assistant" utility to import my user account from my backup drive, which will bring all of your files, email, etc over to your Leopard installation

 

[AeroBar]

clevin and dbwie

thanks.

 

[AeroBar]

1) Make a clone of my old system to a backup drive using SuperDuper
2) Do a fresh install of Leopard on the new system, run software update to update the OS with all of the latest security patches, etc.
3) Install all 3rd party apps from their original install discs, and get all of the updates and patches for them (this gives you the opportunity to leave out some old apps you don't use, or those that won't run on Leopard)
4) Use the "migration assistant" utility to import my user account from my backup drive, which will bring all of your files, email, etc over to your Leopard installation

that seems easy enough. I didn't know about "migration assistant" at all.

the whole process will take about two hours, am I right?

 

[markfrautschi]

Double Defragmentation - twice the pain, small, noticible gain

I like the advice given above about making a bootable backup before choosing an upgrade path. I would like to add one vote for going to 10.5.8, which seems fairly stable, and considering 10.6 as a separate upgrade.

As a possible variation, one that is expensive in terms of the extra time that it takes, time when you cannot get 'real' work done on your computer is the following. The idea is to, crudely, "optimize" your hard drive by placing often used but rarely modified operating system files to the first sectors of your hard drive in addition to defragmenting them. Older defragmenters, e.g. Norton Speed Disk in Mac OS X 10.3, used to do this. Perhaps there are newer ones that do that now under 10.5, but I have not looked recently.

1.) Clone your computer to a bootable volume.
2.) Upgrade the clone, not your main drive, using the strategy of your choice.
3.) Boot from that clone.
4.) Test the clone. Do all of your key programs, data, etc. work.
5.) Make a go / no go decision. (You can make a second backup, if you have the resources and the time.)
6.) Using the latest version of Disk Utility, wipe and reformat your Mac's main hard drive. If you have time, you can choose the secure erase option to check the drive surface completely and swap out weak blocks.
7.) Using Carbon Copy Cloner (http://www.bombich.com) in incremental backup mode, clone ONLY the System folder from your bootable clone to your main hard drive.
8.) Using Tech Tool Pro 5.0.5, (http://www.micromat.com/) defragment your Macintosh HD once. This will defragment the System folder you just cloned.
8a.) Possible variation: requiring three defragmentations, next clone the Applications folder, (and the System folder too, even though the latter is already there, so that it is not deleted) and then defragment those two folders, before cloning the rest of your data in the next step
9.) Use Carbon Copy Cloner again, in incremental backup mode, to copy everything (or everything but the System folder; it should not matter if you have not made changes to the System folder). Now your new drive is complete.
10.) Perform another defragmentation. The System folder is already defragmented. It is already at the lowest numbered blocks on your drive. So it will be left alone by the second pass defragmentation.

Notes:

1.) You would think that cloning would automatically defragment (though not optimize) the target drive. But it does not. I believe that the reason for this is multithreading. The speed that this parallelism provides makes the copy faster, but at the price of fragmentation. If you are curious, you can clone a defragmented drive and then examine the fragmentation of the target drive. It's stunning.

2.) The Mac OS X installer does defragment installed files at the end of some installs. However, there is no regular global defragmentation.


Mark Frautschi

 

[staticliner]

I like the advice given above about making a bootable backup before choosing an upgrade path. I would like to add one vote for going to 10.5.8, which seems fairly stable, and considering 10.6 as a separate upgrade.

As a possible variation, one that is expensive in terms of the extra time that it takes, time when you cannot get 'real' work done on your computer is the following. The idea is to, crudely, "optimize" your hard drive by placing often used but rarely modified operating system files to the first sectors of your hard drive in addition to defragmenting them. Older defragmenters, e.g. Norton Speed Disk in Mac OS X 10.3, used to do this. Perhaps there are newer ones that do that now under 10.5, but I have not looked recently.

1.) Clone your computer to a bootable volume.
2.) Upgrade the clone, not your main drive, using the strategy of your choice.
3.) Boot from that clone.
4.) Test the clone. Do all of your key programs, data, etc. work.
5.) Make a go / no go decision. (You can make a second backup, if you have the resources and the time.)
6.) Using the latest version of Disk Utility, wipe and reformat your Mac's main hard drive. If you have time, you can choose the secure erase option to check the drive surface completely and swap out weak blocks.
7.) Using Carbon Copy Cloner (http://www.bombich.com) in incremental backup mode, clone ONLY the System folder from your bootable clone to your main hard drive.
8.) Using Tech Tool Pro 5.0.5, (http://www.micromat.com/) defragment your Macintosh HD once. This will defragment the System folder you just cloned.
8a.) Possible variation: requiring three defragmentations, next clone the Applications folder, (and the System folder too, even though the latter is already there, so that it is not deleted) and then defragment those two folders, before cloning the rest of your data in the next step
9.) Use Carbon Copy Cloner again, in incremental backup mode, to copy everything (or everything but the System folder; it should not matter if you have not made changes to the System folder). Now your new drive is complete.
10.) Perform another defragmentation. The System folder is already defragmented. It is already at the lowest numbered blocks on your drive. So it will be left alone by the second pass defragmentation.

Notes:

1.) You would think that cloning would automatically defragment (though not optimize) the target drive. But it does not. I believe that the reason for this is multithreading. The speed that this parallelism provides makes the copy faster, but at the price of fragmentation. If you are curious, you can clone a defragmented drive and then examine the fragmentation of the target drive. It's stunning.

2.) The Mac OS X installer does defragment installed files at the end of some installs. However, there is no regular global defragmentation.


Mark Frautschi

I'm doing a fresh install when Snow Leopard comes out... Already have my rolling backup ready

 

[dejo]

upgrade often produce unsolvable problems here and there, quite annoy.

Often? And your proof of that is what?

 

[AeroBar]

I like the advice given above about making a bootable backup before choosing an upgrade path. I would like to add one vote for going................................ment installed files at the end of some installs. However, there is no regular global defragmentation.


Mark Frautschi

WHAT??

Seriously, I could not follow that at all. It's not you its me.

Thanks though.

 

[markfrautschi]

Additional Note

I left out a third note in my original response. Sorry.

3.) This belongs at the very beginning. I would, at least at my present level of ignorance, avoid and ignore the issue of fragmentation entirely when it comes to solid state drives (SSDs). The reason is that to avoid prematurely wearing out frequently used segments of the SSD's CMOS, all SSDs use wear leveling algorithms. In addition to reducing some measure of the performance advantages of CMOS over conventional drives, wear leveling is a form of fragmentation from that vantage point. (Perhaps this is why I have yet to be blown away by my very limited experience with SSDs, and, naturally, there are many factors impacting the subjective experience of speed. My hope is that one of these, the rewritten Finder of Snow Leopard, will eliminate or ameliorate the spinning beach ball that has become all too familiar.)

Like the old Steven Wright joke about placing a humidifier and a dehumidifer in the same room and allowing them to duke it out, you can defragment an SSD drive. The defragmentation tools I am familiar with do not check for the presence of an SSD device. Out of habit I started this the first time I set up an SSD based machine for a customer. (The Tech Tool Pro 4 of that time did not check and offer an option to back out, perhaps Tech Tool Pro 5 checks for this.) Fortunately, I thought about this before the process got too far along!

Mark Frautschi

 

[clevin]

Often? And your proof of that is what?

1. majority of users here, when polled, said upgrade is not their choice
2. i upgraded twice with my two macs, one of them safari wouldnt open, another on refuse to run bootcamp. if i were to make statement based solely on my experience, I would say it have problems 100%.

 

[dejo]

1. majority of users here, when polled, said upgrade is not their choice

Do you have a link to this poll? (Even though a voluntary poll will hardly be scientific.)

if i were to make statement based solely on my experience, I would say it have problems 100%.

Taking your personal experience and projecting that upon an entire population of upgraders is foolish and serves no purpose. I once had an iMac fail due to a logic board problem. Does that mean all iMacs are faulty? Or even that they are "often" faulty? Not at all. I guess we have a completely different understanding of what "often" means.