RE:
"Ok now i use leopard can i then split my hard drive into two partisions, then transfer all my movies over to partision 2."
I just did this to install Snow Leopard onto a friend's iMac a few days ago. It worked beautifully.
The _important_ question:
Is there currently enough free space on your drive so that you can create a second partition of adequate size?
My friend had (actually, still has) 10.5.7 on his "first" partition. Here's what I did:
1. Booted up from the 10.6 install CD (actually, I used the 10a432 developer release).
2. When the main install screen appears, I went to Disk Utility.
3. I selected the iMac's internal drive (topmost icon) and clicked "partition". The partition window appears.
4. I chose two partitions (first would be for existing data, second would be for new system install).
5. DU displays the "split" rectangle (representing the drive). The "dividing line" can be adjusted up or down to adjust the size of the partition-to-be. I chose relatively small - 32gig - for the new SL partition. Then I clicked "apply".
6. DU does its thing. I believe it first makes some "adjustments" and may actually relocate some files to "clear up" physical space on the drive so that a new, independent partition may be created. Then it splits the disk directory and creates the partition. The whole process went surprisingly fast.
7. We then were able to install a "fresh" copy of 10.6 on the empty partition.
8. At this point, my advice for him was to just use SL "experimentally", to see how it would work. But my friend wanted to migrate everything, so - with hesitance on my part, we did. It all "came over" without a hitch.
On my own iMac, I chose NOT to do a "full migration" yet. I'm bringing things over a little at a time to see how they go. So far, so good.
- John
