Need basic help on OS installs, partitioning, cloning procedures

[Wie Gehts]

hello. I want to do some upgrade things with my macbook and need to know if all is correct.

My current internal hd is 80gb. I'm on 10.4.11. I plan on going to Snow Leopard but I want to keep my 10.4.11 system too to use. Almost 2 year old intel macbook.

I have superduper. I just got a new 500gb drive for the macbook. I also got a usb external 2.5" enclosure. I haven't done anything yet.

What I want to do.... I want to partition the new hd into two. Probably 120gb to clone my current system on (with some room for growth) and the remainder to do a whole new fresh install + various applications of Snow Leopard.

Firstly, is it OK for me to have two separate OS's to boot from?

Secondly, cloning procedure.... should I take out my current hd and put it into the external enclosure, then put in the new hd, then boot from my former drive via usb and clone it onto the newly installed drive?

OR...put the new drive first into the enclosure, clone my system onto it, then switch out the drives? Does it matter which way?

Thirdly, since I'm not going to be doing any upgrading of my 10.4 system to SL....I'm leaving it intact as is.....and then doing a completely new install of SL....is there anything weird I should look out for. I dunno....my admin account...or not being able to have Logic installed more than once on the same machine...or anything else I should be aware of?

Thanks

 

[BlueRevolution]

Firstly, is it OK for me to have two separate OS's to boot from?

Absolutely.

Secondly, cloning procedure.... should I take out my current hd and put it into the external enclosure, then put in the new hd, then boot from my former drive via usb and clone it onto the newly installed drive?

OR...put the new drive first into the enclosure, clone my system onto it, then switch out the drives? Does it matter which way?

Doesn't matter.

Thirdly, since I'm not going to be doing any upgrading of my 10.4 system to SL....I'm leaving it intact as is.....and then doing a completely new install of SL....is there anything weird I should look out for. I dunno....my admin account...or not being able to have Logic installed more than once on the same machine...or anything else I should be aware of?

You'll basically have two computers, with all of the associated costs and benefits.

 

[spinne1]

Your admin account is tied to the OS for each install, so you'd have two admin accounts. As for Logic, you'd probably just reinstall as if you never had before and the new hard drive would basically act as though the other install did not exist. I'm not sure of Logic's registration/copy protection scheme but I imagine you'll have to do whatever you did to install it the first time (but registering would probably not be necessary if you already did it--most software allows you to NOT register either by choice or by trying to register automatically and failing (I have had to unplug the ethernet from the computer before to install some things.))

Having been through many updates of OSs on Macs (I started at System 6,) I can tell you that there is not really a good reason to hold on to 10.4.11. In fact, you should be on Leopard now. It really is much better. For example, the automatic server/network sensing is fantastic (all the comps on my network simply show up in the left part of any finder window.)

With that in mind, I would NOT split your external drive up. I'd first clone my internal using Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper to the entire external hard drive. Then I would get Leopard and upgrade to Leopard. Then I would find out if it ran okay. If so, I would re-clone to the external (and set up for automatic updates.) Then, when Snow Leopard came out I would install it and see if stable, and if so, re-clone again.

 

[Wie Gehts]

thanks for both your replies.

spinne... i have reasons to want to keep using my 10.4.11 system, a big reason being that everything works. i'd like to go right to SL when it comes out and would like to pare down that system...trash the apps i know now that i never use... to mainly logic and a couple of my mostly used plugins. my tiger system is bloated with alot of stuff but, like i say, it works, its there, so theres no reason to mess with it.

and if i find theres issues with SL and drivers or whatever, i have my 10.4 system to use...its no big deal.

so, you say i should first place my new drive into the external and clone my internal macbook to that and then swap? i'm still going to have to partition the drive in two.....theres no difference in the procedure whether its done with the drive installed in the laptop or connected to an external enclosure, is there?

 

[BlueRevolution]

theres no difference in the procedure whether its done with the drive installed in the laptop or connected to an external enclosure, is there?

None at all.

In terms of compatibility issues, you may see more in terms of applications dropping support for Tiger rather than failing to support Snow Leopard. Adium just dropped Tiger support as of 1.4, which rather irked me, especially since 1.4 was the version that added Twitter support.

 

[Wie Gehts]

thanks.

the way i look at this computer stuff is that being with the latest os's or what-have-you doesn't mean that much to me. The shortest way to explain is, just because the next OS upgrade comes out doesn't make the system you've had..along with its applications...suddenly become broken.

The current system I have, as long as I have a machine to run it on will probably do everything I need till I croak if i so choose. having said that, i'll definitelt be getting SL.....because its there i guess

 

[BlueRevolution]

Doesn't mean the newer version will be any worse, either.