Bizarre Partition Map Scheme Problem.

[lPHONE]

I don't know how I managed to do it, but I'm running Leopard on my MBP on an Apple Partition Map. Anyhow, I got my Snow Leopard disk yesterday and it wants me to reformat to GUID and warns me that it will erase everything. Now I have to figure out how a way to backup everything, install SL on GUID and restore everything while retaining my settings, serial numbers and all that good stuff. Is this possible?

 

[madog]

Using DiskUtility, or a free app like SuperDuper or .... one of the others I can't think of, you can clone your drive to an external. It will retain all of your settings as is. Then, when you reinstall the OS, you can do a data migration of your apps and, for the most part, it will preserve the preferences and application support files which contain that data.

However, at the same time running a data migration of apps to Snow Leopard can cause unexpected problems especially if there is any old data that happens to be incompatible with the new OS.

 

[Makosuke]

Using DiskUtility, or a free app like SuperDuper or .... one of the others I can't think of...

Carbon Copy Cloner is probably the one you can't think of. I personally swear by it, and it's free, though I'm sure the others work well, too.

I also second the recommendation to just clone to an external, install SL, then Migration Assist everything over--that's basically what a Snow Leopard upgrade does anyway, and it should preserve serial numbers, prefs, and just about everything else. I was actually rather surprised the last time I did this that I didn't need to do anything with the Adobe CS3 apps, and those are notorious for their draconian, flakey license manager (I've had that break when I didn't do anything...).

 

[madog]

Carbon Copy Cloner is probably the one you can't think of. I personally swear by it, and it's free, though I'm sure the others work well, too.

Yup, that's the one.

 

[larkost]

I am not sure why people go for CarbonCopy Cloner when Disk Utility is there already. For things like this the same code that Disk Utility uses in the background is used to create the image.

 

[madog]

I am not sure why people go for CarbonCopy Cloner when Disk Utility is there already. For things like this the same code that Disk Utility uses in the background is used to create the image.

I always use DU as well, but I've read some things online about how one or both of those programs maintain some things better than DU. Maybe it was file permissions or invisible files or something of that nature, but I've never had an issue with DU myself, and I've used its restore feature at least a hundred times.

So, while I have no idea actually what it is or even if it's true the only other reason I can think of for those third party apps is that many people just don't realize DU's restore option is in fact a cloning feature.

 

[gr8tfly]

I always use DU as well, but I've read some things online about how one or both of those programs maintain some things better than DU. Maybe it was file permissions or invisible files or something of that nature, but I've never had an issue with DU myself, and I've used its restore feature at least a hundred times.

So, while I have no idea actually what it is or even if it's true the only other reason I can think of for those third party apps is that many people just don't realize DU's restore option is in fact a cloning feature.

+1
I've used DU for years without problem. The other utilities have other functions, such as incremental and selective backups, but for making a bootable partition clone or image file, DU works perfectly well.

Anyway, back OT, you can do it two ways: make a backup image, change the partition map to GUID, then restore, then upgrade your original system to SL; or, make an image, change the partition map to GUID, install SL, then migrate apps and user data from your backup image.

Personally, I would go with the first method (backup/restore/upgrade). It's probably the most trouble free, and, if you do have an issue, you can always do a clean install and migrate.