I know that a lot of people were asking about wether they should upgrade or install SL. So, when I put in the disk, it said to shutdown and restart so that it could install the OS. Anyways, I just wanted to know if it was normal that I didn't have any choices as to if I wanted to make just an upgrade or a complete installation of SL. I thought I was going to lose my stuff on my HD, but everything is still there like if nothing happened. The thing is... I kind of wanted to have everything erased and do a clean install.
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So I just went from Tiger to Snow Leopard...
- Thread starter Captain Planet
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Yes, it must shut down and start up on the install DVD to complete your installation, this is normal for all installs, upgrade or otherwise.
After your mac restarts, and the snow leopard installation boots from the disc, you will have to open the disk utility from the menu bar, and erase your drive to do a clean install.
Apple removed the options to erase/upgrade or archive and install.
SL will upgrade install by default.
Apple removed the options to erase/upgrade or archive and install.
SL will upgrade install by default.
Alright, that makes sense. So let's say I stay with the upgrade, does it take less space than doing a clean install? What I mean is that with Tiger, I did an upgrade to SL, so it didn't erase Tiger itself. But if I were to do a clean installation, I would erase my HD and then install SL. So should it take the same amount of space if I do it either methods?
It would definitely free up more space.
I just installed SL on my Tiger machine today using Disk Utility to wipe out the Tiger drive first. I remember twice when installing 10.4, my freed HD space was at 148GB, with SL it stood at 154GB. Fresh installs are always better and from what I've seen today, SL has dramatically improved my Mac's performance. Back up your files and go for it, I say.
I just installed SL on my Tiger machine today using Disk Utility to wipe out the Tiger drive first. I remember twice when installing 10.4, my freed HD space was at 148GB, with SL it stood at 154GB. Fresh installs are always better and from what I've seen today, SL has dramatically improved my Mac's performance. Back up your files and go for it, I say.
In your case coming from Tiger it makes more sense to do an erase and install. You can deselect the option to install extra printers, etc, which will free up another 2GB of space.
After you do that you have the choice to manually reinstall your apps, or you can pull them in from a TM backup.
If you have a lot of legacy apps and utilities installed you would probably be better off installing applications manually to avoid compatibility problems with Snow Leopard. You can manually pull back specific files from your TM backup once you set up the new box to use the same TM backup.
Since he is coming from Tiger he won't have a TM backup to work with as that was not a feature until Leopard. He will have to manually back up and restore his files which means he will most likely have to do a manual reinstall of all of his apps.
Just to make sure, when I have the disk in after restarting, I go on Disk Utility and I should see an option to erase my HD?
It won't be on the main installation screen, but yeah after restarting, don't proceed with the installation, instead you'll see Disk Utility on the menu bar, then you have to find your way to your HDD and erase the partition (leave the language as default).
Ok, so I went on Disk Utility... and now I click on Macintosh HD. Then, I go on Erase and I click erase? It says a message saying it'll erase this partition or something like that... so is that what I'm suppose to do?
Alright great! At first, I was doing the free space procedure... it was taking forever. Than, I figured I didn't want to free up the available space but do a complete clean up. Anyways, thanks again!