Tiger 10.4.11 to Snow Leopard 10.6.3

[bigredrowr]

Hey all, I have had Tiger on my MBP since i bought it in August 2007. The MBP has a 2.4 Ghz IC2Duo and 2GB of DDR2 SDRAM. I need to update to Snow Leopard for numerous reasons, the foremost being school work and the fact that I just bought an iPhone 4 and can't sync anything on my computer with it.

The question I have is whether or not I can use the 29.99 Snow Leopard to upgrade my OS. I have read that you can do it with no issues, or that you can do it and it will tell you that you need OS 10.5 (Leopard). Being a student, I can't really afford to shell out 129.99 for the box set, especially when Windows users can upgrade from XP to 7 without any issues other than hardware.

If I can upgrade straight to Snow Leopard, how do I go about doing it? I've never installed anything on my MBP other than Firefox and VLC, so you can probably see where installing a whole new OS would be daunting. Should I backup all of my data on my hard drive to an external? These questions, etc...

If anybody can get back to me on this, I would be eternally grateful.

 

[Angelo95210]

Yes you can use the 29.99 update. I did it from Tiger on my 2007 MBP Core Duo. Works very well and this is my main computer.

 

[Fishrrman]

"The question I have is whether or not I can use the 29.99 Snow Leopard to upgrade my OS."

Yes, you can.

DO NOT pay any mind to anyone who says that you cannot.

Just get the $30 DVD, boot the MacBook from it, and run the installer. That's about it.

 

[bigredrowr]

So how do I go about the process? Do I need to backup my whole hard drive to an external? What is the difference between a "clean install" and just an upgrade? How do I perform a clean install?

Basically, does anybody have a step by step guide that I can follow?

 

[satcomer]

Clone your current drive to an external then with the Snow Leopard $29 disk do a fresh install. Also you can watch a video of a fresh install.

 

[blevins321]

Someone please correct me if I'm wrong about this. But I don't think you can upgrade Tiger to Snow Leopard (only Leopard to Snow Leopard). I think a clean install would be necessary (that $30 disk is for upgrade and/or clean install, so that's good). This might be better anyway; a good excuse to 'clean house.'

A clean install is when you erase your hard drive and then install the operating system. An upgrade is when you just overwrite the operating system and keep other files in place.

To do a clean install, insert the Snow Leopard disk and hold down Option as you press the power button. When the operating system list appears, the CD will appear after a few seconds. Click on it, and the system will boot off the DVD. Just follow its instructions. When it shows a box or button that says something regarding formatting or erasing, choose that.

Of course, before you do this, be sure to backup your files. You'll have to install applications the same way that you did initially. For the files, just copy everything to an external drive and be sure to unplug that external drive before you start the clean install.

 

[Dave Braine]

Yes, you can go from Tiger to SL. I've done it myself. Here's a suggested way:

Clone your MBP to an external drive. Install SL onto that external drive. Have a play with it, upgrade any Apps etc that need it. While you're doing this you still have a working MPB on Tiger if you have problems. When you are happy, then clone the external drive back to the MBP.