I have a macbook5,2 (well it's my wife's) bought back in 2009 so that I would be never again be fixing her previous Windows PCs. It's still running Leopard (10.5.8, I think), with 160GB HD, 2x1GB RAM, 2.13GHz, etc., all unchanged from new - it if ain't broke, don't fix it has been my rationale. Yes, we're living in the past!
Unfortunately it's getting slow, and several programs won't update to the latest, e.g. Safari needs at least 10.6.something. I wanted to upgrade OS and hardware, but with a fallback as I'm risk averse. So a key approach was to try to keep the old OS on the old HD, as if it all goes wrong, my wife will not be happy, and at least I could just go back to that if absolutely necessary.
So I invested in a SSD (250GB) and 2x2GB RAM, with the intention to upgrade to Snow Leopard 10.6.something (I got the DVD back in 2009!) and then upgrade the OS a little further if required. So I did a Time Machine backup, did a Safe Mode boot so that it ran a filesystem check, then a normal boot and used Disk Utility to copy the existing HD to the SSD in an external USB enclosure (took a few hours), checked it would boot from the external SSD, then put the SSD inside and the old HD in the external USB enclosure, all to plan so far.
Then I booted from the SSD, popped the Snow Leopard DVD in, and tried to upgrade, but got an error that the new SSD needed a GUID partition table (or similar), so I guess I missed a step in preparing the SSD. Is there a way round this, or do I need to in effect wipe the new SSD (how, will the DVD give me that option?), install Snow Leopard from the DVD, then reinstall all the files from the Time Machine, then upgrade further to 10.7/10.8? And what step did I miss with Disk Utility?
FWIW I haven't even put the new RAM in yet, as I didn't want to risk an error after making 2 changes at once.
Any help much appreciated.
Unfortunately it's getting slow, and several programs won't update to the latest, e.g. Safari needs at least 10.6.something. I wanted to upgrade OS and hardware, but with a fallback as I'm risk averse. So a key approach was to try to keep the old OS on the old HD, as if it all goes wrong, my wife will not be happy, and at least I could just go back to that if absolutely necessary.
So I invested in a SSD (250GB) and 2x2GB RAM, with the intention to upgrade to Snow Leopard 10.6.something (I got the DVD back in 2009!) and then upgrade the OS a little further if required. So I did a Time Machine backup, did a Safe Mode boot so that it ran a filesystem check, then a normal boot and used Disk Utility to copy the existing HD to the SSD in an external USB enclosure (took a few hours), checked it would boot from the external SSD, then put the SSD inside and the old HD in the external USB enclosure, all to plan so far.
Then I booted from the SSD, popped the Snow Leopard DVD in, and tried to upgrade, but got an error that the new SSD needed a GUID partition table (or similar), so I guess I missed a step in preparing the SSD. Is there a way round this, or do I need to in effect wipe the new SSD (how, will the DVD give me that option?), install Snow Leopard from the DVD, then reinstall all the files from the Time Machine, then upgrade further to 10.7/10.8? And what step did I miss with Disk Utility?
FWIW I haven't even put the new RAM in yet, as I didn't want to risk an error after making 2 changes at once.
Any help much appreciated.