Upgrading from 10.2 to 10.3 - help!

[Ines]

Sorry to be thick but I am so scared of losing stuff ... I have an ibook with Mac OS X 10.2.8 and have just bought the full version of 10.3.

The instructions are not clear .. does anyone know exactly what to do so I simply upgrade and dont install?

Any hints and tips will be welcomed.

thanks
Ines

 

[wordmunger]

Just use the "archive and install" feature when you get to the "options" screen, and check "preserve users and network settings." Your old accounts/files/applications will be preserved. Still, it's best to make a backup, just in case (of course, you back up your files anyway, right?).

 

[Ines]

thanks - by backup do you mean put stuff onto CD? I tried to do that with iphotos but they wouldnt open on my PC even though I had saved them as jpegs? Also not sure how to back up itunes (do I just make music CDs - i have so many tracks)? Reason music files seem ok after saving to CD.

thanks for helping me .. maybe I will be able to help someone in a few years!

 

[wordmunger]

thanks - by backup do you mean put stuff onto CD? I tried to do that with iphotos but they wouldnt open on my PC even though I had saved them as jpegs? Also not sure how to back up itunes (do I just make music CDs - i have so many tracks)? Reason music files seem ok after saving to CD.

thanks for helping me .. maybe I will be able to help someone in a few years!

Yes, back up everything that's important to you--you should do this regularly even if you aren't upgrading your computer. For iTunes, make a playlist, then under Preferences -- Burn, select "data CD." This will allow you to put many more songs on a CD than burning a standard audio CD. If you already own the CDs, you don't need to back up--the CD is your backup. Also, your iPod can serve as a backup device (do you have an iPod?)--you can copy files directly to the iPod to serve as a backup.

For the photo problem, were you trying to use the pictures on a Windows computer? Then you need to specify a windows-compatible format for the CD.

 

[MisterMe]

Sorry to be thick but I am so scared of losing stuff ... I have an ibook with Mac OS X 10.2.8 and have just bought the full version of 10.3.

The instructions are not clear .. does anyone know exactly what to do so I simply upgrade and dont install?

Any hints and tips will be welcomed.

thanks
Ines

Stick your MacOS X 10.3 CD into your computers optical drive and restart while pressing the [C] key. You get loud howls from the peanut gallery that you should back-up and wipe your hard disk before installing your new OS. Others recommend that you archive and install. Let me tell you in no uncertain terms that it just isn't necessary. Worst than that, it is a waste of time. MacOS X 10 is super reliable and super robust. The clear inference to be drawn from advice to do clean installs is that MacOS X is fragile and unreliable. By all accounts, MacOS X 10 is more reliable than any previous version. Having used Macs since System 6, I can count on my fingers the times the I have done clean installs. Included in that number are hard disk replacements and file system upgrades.

Bottomline: MacOS X 10.3 just works. Making things more complicated for yourself is a waste of your time.

 

[emw]

Bottomline: MacOS X 10.3 just works. Making things more complicated for yourself is a waste of your time.

While this may be true with an OS X upgrade, to emphasize wordmunger's statement, it's good to always be in the habit of backing up your data to make sure you don't lose it for any reason - OS upgrade, pissed off significant other, whatever (doing it at upgrade time is just a good excuse to do it). Which reminds me, I better go write out a few CDs...

 

[Ines]

Thanks I backed up almost everything, and just selected upgrade. Everything was still there afterwards but at least I have back-ups of itunes (data format), iphotos and Reason2 now so thanks.

 

[Macky-Mac]

thanks - by backup do you mean put stuff onto CD? I tried to do that with iphotos but they wouldnt open on my PC even though I had saved them as jpegs?......

remember that you need to make sure the indiviual files have the .jpg extension in their file name so that the windows programs will read them