Cloning HD and Clean Install of Snow Leopard

[61SG]

Hello, all.

I have a 2.16G (black) macbook that I will be upgrading to Snow Leopard. Since I've had the computer for over three years, I want to perform a clean installation of 10.6.

I don't have a ton of files on my macbook and--apart from some large Garageband files--what I do have are relatively small (Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, music, photos) so I've always backed up by saving things to CDs/DVDs. Not the best plan, I know, which is why I recently purchased a Lacie 1TB external drive so that I can have a clone.

I would like to install OSX onto the external drive but I'm not sure how things should be sequenced. I've never partitioned a HD before; should this be performed first? How's this for a sequence:
1) partition the external HD first
2) install Snow Leopard onto the external HD
3) make the clone of my system and
4) do a clean install of Snow Leopard on my internal macbook HD

Does this make sense or is there a better way for me to approach this?

Also, is there anything different I'd have to do to install the 10.6 on the external drive?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Hellhammer]

Why would you install 10.6 to the external HD? You could just clone your HD with CCC to the ext drive, install OS X to the internal one and move the files you need back to the internal. Then you can either leave the clone as a backup to the HD or erase it and use the ext for backups.

 

[spinnerlys]

No need to install Mac OS X onto the external HDD first.

1. Partition the HDD into three (or more) partitions, one for the backup of your current installation, one for the backup of the future installation and one for data.
2. Use CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper to clone the current Mac OS X to the external HDD and the prepared partition.
3. Do a Clean Install of OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard
4. Use CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper to clone the new installation of Mac OS X on the other prepared partition.
5. Use Migration Assistant or Finder (or not) to copy all your important data from the clone (1.) onto your new system.
6. Use your Mac.
​