Should I be scared to upgrade to Tiger?

[2A Batterie]

I've been out of the Mac loop for a few months, so forgive me if this is slightly outdated/retarded. I want to upgrade to 10.4, but I'm a little afraid something could go wrong. My main concern is that I don't have my hard drives backed up... should I wait to back up my hard drives? Has anyone had any sort of major problems upgrading to 10.4?

 

[gekko513]

You should always back up your important stuff whether you're about to do an upgrade or not.

 

[risc]

I upgraded 1 machine to Tiger and did 2 fresh installs on the day of release, all 3 machines are still chugging along nicely. I backed up all 3 machines of course, and I suggest you do too.

 

[miloblithe]

No problems here. Also, with 10.4.3 coming out soon(ish... one assumes), Tiger should have most of the little bugs worked out.

If you don't have somewhere to back up your hard drives, you could at least put the important stuff on CDs or DVDs.

 

[CanadaRAM]

I've been out of the Mac loop for a few months, so forgive me if this is slightly outdated/retarded. I want to upgrade to 10.4, but I'm a little afraid something could go wrong. My main concern is that I don't have my hard drives backed up... should I wait to back up my hard drives? Has anyone had any sort of major problems upgrading to 10.4?

You need to inventory your programs FIRST to see what breaks and needs to be updated for Tiger. ProTools for sure needs an upgrade to work.

OTOH: if it ain't broke.... don't mess wid it. Especially on a music production machine.

 

[IJ Reilly]

Three upgrades here, no problems, but then I waited for 10.4.2. If you decide to go through with it, upgrade, repair permissions, then run software update. Backing up beforehand can't hurt.

 

[mcs37]

Three upgrades here, no problems, but then I waited for 10.4.2. If you decide to go through with it, upgrade, repair permissions, then run software update. Backing up beforehand can't hurt.

What's the best way to upgrade other than copying the entire / folder over to another system? Since I'm the only one who uses this machine, I figured copying /Users/myaccount to another box would be sufficient for my music, documents, etc.

I've never upgraded myself so I'm looking forward to seeing what it's like. I imagine you just put the DVD in the drive and reboot, and you then let Apple take care of the rest?

 

[IJ Reilly]

What's the best way to upgrade other than copying the entire / folder over to another system? Since I'm the only one who uses this machine, I figured copying /Users/myaccount to another box would be sufficient for my music, documents, etc.

I've never upgraded myself so I'm looking forward to seeing what it's like. I imagine you just put the DVD in the drive and reboot, and you then let Apple take care of the rest?

It depends on who you ask.

If you decide to back up first, how much you back up will depend on the size of drive you've got for the purpose. If it's large enough for a full backup, download Carbon Copy Cloner, and go for it (the system files can't be drag-copied in the Finder). Takes a long time, though. Otherwise, just copy over your user directory, which is something you should do regularly anyway. Performing a full backup just for an OS upgrade is an overly paranoid precaution, IMO. I know not everybody agrees with me on this.

Otherwise, insert the Tiger DVD and upgrade the way Apple intended you to upgrade.

 

[2A Batterie]

Thanks for the input. It may take a while, but I'm going to wait and save up to buy a 500gb external drive to back up all of my stuff. Better to wait and be safe than to upgrade now and potentially cause heartbreak.