Upgrading via Time Machine

[birdburger]

Hi, this is a bit of an old school issue but hopefully somebody can help.

I have a MacBook Pro unibody that currently has snow leopard 10.6.8 installed.

I wish to upgrade my internal hard drive.

The only install disc I have is for leopard, I do not have an install disc for snow leopard.

Therefore can I, change the hard drive, install leopard using the install disc and then restore from a time machine back up that is in snow leopard?

Will the operating system upgrade to snow leopard through using the time machine backup?

Any help would be much appreciated.
Many thanks

 

[simsaladimbamba]

No.

You either buy the Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard DVD for 19 USD from the Apple Online Store or use CarbonCopyCloner (version 3.4.7 is still free) or SuperDuper! to clone the old HDD to the new HDD with the help of a USB enclosure for 2.5" S-ATA drives.

 

[Isamilis]

If you already have time machine backup, then just press option-R while booting. No need to have install DVD.

 

[simsaladimbamba]

If you already have time machine backup, then just press option-R while booting. No need to have install DVD.

What does that accomplish? There is no Recovery partition on that Mac, since that was only introduced in Mac OS X 10.7 Lion or OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion.

And booting into the Recovery partition is done via CMD+R.

 

[Isamilis]

Yes, you're correct. I tested this on ML. I haven't tested in Leopard / Snow Leopard.

What does that accomplish? There is no Recovery partition on that Mac, since that was only introduced in Mac OS X 10.7 Lion or OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion.

And booting into the Recovery partition is done via CMD+R.

 

[benwiggy]

I do not have an install disc for snow leopard.

You should get one. They can be bought very cheaply from the Apple Store.

Firstly, it would solve your current dilemma, and be useful in case of any problems you might have (e.g. allowing you to boot to the installer disk to Repair your Hard drive).

Secondly, the licence to use Snow Leopard is closely linked to ownership of a disk. If you never had a disk, then you don't really have a licence to use OS X.

(This has changed with Lion and downloads from the MAS.)