Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

New hard drive...Leopard Now or wait for SL?

B

bball3301

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Apr 21, 2009
2
0
Hi everyone, need some quick advice here...

I am picking up my 13" Macbook Pro today, along with 4GB of RAM and a 320GB WD Scorpio. My question is...should I wait for Snow Leopard before I upgrade the HD (Clean Install), or just install Leopard on the new HD and do an upgrade to Snow Leopard. I have always prefered to do a clean install, but I don't necessarily feel like waiting to put the new HD in either. Any thoughts?
 
It seems that even if you wanna do a clean install of SL you must have leopard installed on your machine because the install dvd will check that. Then you can choose to do a clean install on your machine, therefore you can get your HDD immediately.:)
 
TripleJJJ said:
It seems that even if you wanna do a clean install of SL you must have leopard installed on your machine because the install dvd will check that. Then you can choose to do a clean install on your machine, therefore you can get your HDD immediately.:)
Click to expand...

Are you sure about this? I realize Apple hasn't officially said 10A432 is GM, but I just put a brand new WD drive in my MBP and did a clean SL install without leopard ever being on the drive.
 
I'm not totally sure about this so if someone wants to correct me, go for it. There's really no "upgrade" disc. It's full retail but given that label for those who bought a Mac with Leopard during a specific time period. When Leopard was released, it was the same thing. Only those who purchased a Mac before the Leopard released were given the "upgrade". I would assume it's the same for Snow Leopard.

OP, either way is OK. You won't be affected in anyway. I would just go ahead and do the Leopard install. I wouldn't upgrade to Snow Leopard right away until an update or two is released to sort out any bugs.

EDIT: Ok, there was a Leopard upgrade disc but I don't think it was available to the general public, only to those who purchased a Mac before and close to the Leopard launch.
 
When I had a white Macbook, I got it 2nd hand and it came with the Leopard 'upgrade' disc. It did however, need Tiger to be installed before I could then do a clean install.
 
You will need to install Leopard first. The $29 Snow Leopard disc is a full version of OS X, however upon booting up to the install screen it will do a check first to see if Leopard is installed. If it sees Leopard it will allow you to the enter Disc Utility screen to do a full wipe of the hard drive and then do a clean install of Snow Leopard. This is the same method that Apple has done with all upgrades on OS X.
The current build of Snow Leopard is a "developer build" and it does not do a check to see if Leopard is installed, therefore you can in fact install it on an empty drive. It's only for developers to try out to work on their apps for SL so Apple doesn't expect developers to install the developer build over their current install.

This is the same thing that's happening with Windows 7 RC1. The current build for testers is the Ultimate version and it doesn't require a previous install of Windows Vista. Developer builds and beta tests OS's are not considered "upgrades".

There are some naysayers on this forum and they will be telling you that the $29 can be installed on a brand new empty drive without installing Leopard first. Don't believe a word they are saying to you, they are just trying to create fights on here.
 
HLdan said:
You will need to install Leopard first. The $29 Snow Leopard disc is a full version of OS X, however upon booting up to the install screen it will do a check first to see if Leopard is installed. If it sees Leopard it will allow you to the enter Disc Utility screen to do a full wipe of the hard drive and then do a clean install of Snow Leopard. This is the same method that Apple has done with all upgrades on OS X.
The current build of Snow Leopard is a "developer build" and it does not do a check to see if Leopard is installed, therefore you can in fact install it on an empty drive. It's only for developers to try out to work on their apps for SL so Apple doesn't expect developers to install the developer build over their current install.

This is the same thing that's happening with Windows 7 RC1. The current build for testers is the Ultimate version and it doesn't require a previous install of Windows Vista. Developer builds and beta tests OS's are not considered "upgrades".

There are some naysayers on this forum and they will be telling you that the $29 can be installed on a brand new empty drive without installing Leopard first. Don't believe a word they are saying to you, they are just trying to create fights on here.
Click to expand...


The snowleopard beta does not force me to have anything on my hard drive before install. So are you saying they will turn this feature on when they ship leopard? I doubt it.
 
kgeier82, I also don’t believe they will do that. The number of complaints Apple will get from people upgrading from Leopard to SL while switching hard drives would be huge!
 
If it's the same as the Leopard upgrade, then what HLDan says would be accurate but at the same time, my previous point would be true that there really isn't an "upgrade" disc it's just a retail disc but with that extra tool that checks if you have Leopard installed?

Anyone know how much retail Snow Leopard will go for?
 
HLdan said:
You will need to install Leopard first. The $29 Snow Leopard disc is a full version of OS X, however upon booting up to the install screen it will do a check first to see if Leopard is installed. If it sees Leopard it will allow you to the enter Disc Utility screen to do a full wipe of the hard drive and then do a clean install of Snow Leopard. This is the same method that Apple has done with all upgrades on OS X.
The current build of Snow Leopard is a "developer build" and it does not do a check to see if Leopard is installed, therefore you can in fact install it on an empty drive. It's only for developers to try out to work on their apps for SL so Apple doesn't expect developers to install the developer build over their current install.

This is the same thing that's happening with Windows 7 RC1. The current build for testers is the Ultimate version and it doesn't require a previous install of Windows Vista. Developer builds and beta tests OS's are not considered "upgrades".

There are some naysayers on this forum and they will be telling you that the $29 can be installed on a brand new empty drive without installing Leopard first. Don't believe a word they are saying to you, they are just trying to create fights on here.
Click to expand...

Thanks guys...just got back from UPS and got my Macbook + RAM + HD. Still at work, but when I get home I'll be installing Leopard on the new HD. :)

On a semi related question, when doing an upgrade to the next version of the OS (in my cause it will be SL), will public and private keys be carried over? The reason I ask is because I currently do iPhone development and just want to know whether I will have to reimport my keys for development.

Thanks!
 
kgeier82 said:
The snowleopard beta does not force me to have anything on my hard drive before install. So are you saying they will turn this feature on when they ship leopard? I doubt it.
Click to expand...

It's not a matter of Apple 'turning the feature on', it's the difference between an upgrade version and a retail version. Any upgrade version requires the installer to be able to detect a previous version already installed. So yes, there will be an 'UPGRADE' version and there will be a 'RETAIL' one which will be full price.

The drop in DVD's are also upgrade versions which require Leopard to install.

This is what Apple have done with every other release.
 
If Snow Leopard needs Leopard to install, this means I'd always need the Leopard discs whenever I need to do a reinstall. Thats two discs instead of the one.

I just bought a HD and I've had it while, still not installed it because I want to know the process that Apple will put us through with the new OS. I don't fancy upgrading my machine to only go through it all over again when Snow Leopard comes out.

I'm tempted to just buy the full version that comes with iWork and iLife. I'm going to get it on HE price anyway so its not like Im going to pay a lot for it and its going to be worth the money either way.
 
So it looks like when you upgrade to SL, it wipes out your drive? I've never done a Mac OS upgrade before and just wanted to clarify. That means you need a time machine backup, right?
 
So if you bought a laptop with Tiger on it, then bought a copy of Leopard that required Tiger to upgrade to Leopard, then bought SL for $29, then today, bought a new hard drive...

Are you still with me?

Would you need to install Tiger, then Leopard, then SL onto the new hard drive to get everything to work?
 
What the hell?

Apple runs a check to see if you have leopard first (fair enough, same as microsoft do) and they do the update for 30 dollars... and people are complaining?

Im sure they will do a full retail DVD for those coming from tiger or something, you could buy that instead if your not happy (for a premium im sure)!
 
Gabriel GR said:
This is kinda irreasonable. So after you buy the upgrade, every time you want to do a clean install you have to go through leopard first?
Click to expand...

No, if you are running Snow Leopard already you already qualify and can just wipe it like normal.
 
Fuchal said:
No, if you are running Snow Leopard already you already qualify and can just wipe it like normal.
Click to expand...

So I'm running snow leopard, it checks for this, i wipe the drive... how does it know i have snow leopard upon rebooting? :)

I doubt the installation process is going to be this convoluted. Apple will tell us I guess in time. I'd rather get the full version and pay more.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back