Snow Leopard - Fresh Install or "Update" from 10.5.8?

[SE30]

I'm finally about to move on from 10.5.8 to 10.6.x ...

The one time I tried the OS X "update" routine rather than a fresh install was from Jaguar to Tiger on a 12" PB G4 and it didn't go so well... The system never worked as smoothly after that - taking a long time to boot up and shut down. Eventually, I lost everything on that hard drive..

The thing is, I don't have the space in terms of an external drive to back up my current 10.5.8 boot partition (approx. 400 gigs on a 1 partition terabyte drive I installed), nor the patience to completely rebuild my boot partition (with something like carbon copy cloner) starting with a ground-up fresh install of Snow Leopard..

So, I'm asking if anyone has had any good luck with just simply "updating" from 10.5.8 to Snow Leopard..? Would this be a safe bet nowadays?

Or, am I playing havoc with my system, and should I utilize another method? What would that method be? Time Machine?

Any help would be greatly appreciated...


My system:
20" (Late 2006, White) iMac Core2Duo 2.16 ghz, 2.5 GB RAM, 1 TB HD OS X 10.5.8 - Audio Related - Logic 9.1.1, DP 5.13

 

[natewsmith]

You can upgrade but I always do a clean install no matter what...

I did an update once to see what it was like and it went fine...

 

[SE30]

You can upgrade but I always do a clean install no matter what...

I did an update once to see what it was like and it went fine...

Do you mean, a clean install within the confines of the OS but not a complete reformat of the hard drive?

 

[lucifiel]

The "update" works, it's just that from sources external, I hear it is faster to do a clean install. By faster I mean "your OS will run faster".

That of course depends. I think I did an "update" then later did a clean install, I noticed very little issue either way. So ymmv.

 

[SE30]

The "update" works, it's just that from sources external, I hear it is faster to do a clean install. By faster I mean "your OS will run faster".

That of course depends. I think I did an "update" then later did a clean install, I noticed very little issue either way. So ymmv.

Thanks. Is there any method of upgrading that combines the clean install approach with an automated rebuilding of the former boot partition apps/plugins/preferences/etc..?