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sm8000

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Dec 30, 2002
18
0
Chicago
My sister and I are playing phone tag. She is upgrading her dual G4 1.4 to 10.3. To prepare, she is making an image of her hard drive, but she is wondering how long it should take (seems to be at least an hour so far). Is this normal? Should it take this long? Is the doing the right thing? I am a PC enthusiast and not fluent in Macspeak, but I'm posting on her behalf as at her apartment that PowerMac is her only computer, so she doesn't have internet right now.
 
I just got off the phone with her, she had given up and shut the system down for the night. She says she does not get the Archive and Install option, which she is familiar with. She gets Custom Install, which she can't choose (if I remember correctly) or else Upgrade.
 
sm8000 said:
My sister and I are playing phone tag. She is upgrading her dual G4 1.4 to 10.3. To prepare, she is making an image of her hard drive, but she is wondering how long it should take (seems to be at least an hour so far). Is this normal? Should it take this long? Is the doing the right thing? I am a PC enthusiast and not fluent in Macspeak, but I'm posting on her behalf as at her apartment that PowerMac is her only computer, so she doesn't have internet right now.
Regular backups are good things. However, unless your sister has virtually nothing on her hard drive, I have to wonder where she intends to store the image file of it. She really needs to back up only her data and third-party applications. All your sister has to do is to startup from the MacOS X 10.3 CD and let the installer do its thing. In short order, she will be running new "new" OS with all of her settings intact.
 
If she is simply upgrading to 10.3, then why backup at all?

Yes, backing up takes a long time. If she is backing up multiple gigabytes then it can take a looooong time. More than an hour, maybe more than 2. But again upgrading does not require a backup, and rather, only the files that are important to her are worth backing up. To explain it simply, if there are things that she has created that she wants to keep, then she should keep them by burning a CD or something. Hope that makes sense.
 
Just got off the phone with her again. From what she described, it sounds like her hard drive has become unmounted - MacHD icon doesn't appear, apps don't launch, etc. She'll be along to read this (and hopefully post too) but any advice you can offer will help.
 
OS 10.3 Upgrade issue

Hi, I'm the sister with the upgrade issues. I can log in as the root/admin and see my harddrives, access the internet etc. So I'm wondering:
1. can I/should I delete my old user profile that I was having the problems with?
2. does my experience show I have serious harddrive or system issues?
 
You are only upgrading? That is all? Nothing more, nothing less?
Then you should be able to put the DVD in, open it, hit install, and the computer will restart and go about upgrading.
Why are you making an image of your Hard Drive? Although, backing up is a good thing to do. It's not that necessary.
 
My sister sent me this email the other day:

I'm up and running.

built a bootable cd for OS 10.3 with Disk Warrior on it

booted from it, ran disk warrior

reinstalled OS 10.3 - found the option to archive & install

I'm back up.

lost the plug in usability for my wacom but I'm going to find it now.

thank you thank you so much for your help.
 
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