Upgrading Mac Operating Systems

[kurzz]

I've never upgraded a Mac OS before and I'm anticipating Leopard's release.
How does OS upgrading work on a Mac? With Windows, I find the best way to upgrade is do a clean install since Windows becomes too unstable and cluttered with junk/duplicate system files.

I'm hoping with Macs, the process is more "sophisticated", for lack of a better word. Is that the case?

thanks

 

[trainguy77]

Your best option is doing a "archive install" its the safest and easiest way. What this does is moves all your system files aside installs a new OS. This way all your applications files and preferences stay where they are. For the most part you computer should be %100 functional after this. But I recommend you still backup just in case.

 

[WildCowboy]

I pretty much always just do an upgrade install...never had a problem. Do back up first though.

The only machine I do a clean install on my old iBook with a 10 GB drive on it, and that's to strip down the install to give me space to work with.

 

[BoughtAAPL@4.00]

You can do a clean install or install over your existing operating system. Have done Macs for years and other than the 9.x-->10.x upgrade, have done all of them over the existing system without incident. Upgrading is about as painless as you could imagine for the most part.

As the previous poster noted, make sure you make a backup of your most critical files. And that means burning them to a CD, DVD or copying to another hard drive....and then VERIFYING that the files work. You never want to be caught short with a backup that turns out to have been defective or corrupted!