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For those of you that are first time OS upgraders on the Mac, I thought it would be a good idea to put together a list of best practices before an upgrade. So, here goes - and for those of you who are more seasoned, please chime in too.
1. First and foremost, backup. If you don't have a backup drive, get one now. An external USB hard drive of equal or greater capacity to the average Mac should cost less than $100. It is CRITICAL that you backup, particularly if you have critical data or software on the machine.
For this upgrade, I would recommend using a tool like SuperDuper, which creates a bootable clone of your entire hard disk. This way, if you find that something goes terribly wrong or that a key piece of software won't run on Snow Leopard, you have the option to boot back to your old environment intact.
2. Get your hard disk and OS as clean as possible. Run Verify/Repair Permissions and Verify/Repair Disk in Disk Utility. Download Onyx and run all of the maintenance tasks. Clean up old application you don't use or need.
3. Use a program like AppFresh to get all of your existing applications up-to-date. This is critical since developers are working hard to get their apps ready for Snow Leopard and are releasing updates this week (and probably next too).
Anyone else? Chime in...
1. First and foremost, backup. If you don't have a backup drive, get one now. An external USB hard drive of equal or greater capacity to the average Mac should cost less than $100. It is CRITICAL that you backup, particularly if you have critical data or software on the machine.
For this upgrade, I would recommend using a tool like SuperDuper, which creates a bootable clone of your entire hard disk. This way, if you find that something goes terribly wrong or that a key piece of software won't run on Snow Leopard, you have the option to boot back to your old environment intact.
2. Get your hard disk and OS as clean as possible. Run Verify/Repair Permissions and Verify/Repair Disk in Disk Utility. Download Onyx and run all of the maintenance tasks. Clean up old application you don't use or need.
3. Use a program like AppFresh to get all of your existing applications up-to-date. This is critical since developers are working hard to get their apps ready for Snow Leopard and are releasing updates this week (and probably next too).
Anyone else? Chime in...