Preparing for Snow Leopard upgrade

Hello Everyone,

I have been upgrading my 6 year old iMac over the last month, see this thread for details: http://www.mac-forums.com/forums/apple-desktops/261063-old-imac-memory-upgrade.html

So I am now preparing to make the jump from Tiger to Snow Leopard and purchased an external hard drive (G-Tech 750 Gb).

I am planning on cloning my hd onto the G-tech and then do the upgrade from Tiger to Snow Leopard.

A few questions:

1) CarbonCopyCloner or Superduper?

2) I am planning to just "upgrade" to Snow leopard as I am afraid to do a clean install. Any comments one way or the other?

3) Should I partition the new HD into two parts? Use half for my clone back up from Superduper, and then use the other half for time machine. Once time machine is up an running I would be able to delete the clone back up and use that partition as external storage.

Any other comments, yay or nay, are welcome.

Thanks

I originally had Tiger then upgraded to Leopard, then upgraded to Snow Leopard. SL was chugging along with remnents of older OS' files really bogged down my MBP.
I did a fresh Snow Leopard install on my '07 MBP a month ago and I'm glad I did.

If I remember correctly, I backed up everything to an external HD with Carbon Copy Cloner,
installed SL,
rebooted,
did the Apple updates (All except Java. Everything is running smooth without the Java updates so far),
rebooted,
used Migration Assistant and added my user account, applications, network and computer settings and files,
added Keychain password links and Safari bookmarks,
Good to go!

The only thing I forgot to do was add Rosetta when I did the SL install because I didn't think I needed it. I was wrong. Some of my applications needed it but I added it later.

As far as partioning your HD solely for back ups, I'd say that is a bad idea. If your HD craps out on you, will no longer have any backups.
I have 2 external HD's... 1 is for CarbonCopyCloner backup, 1 is for Time Machine back up, 1 is for all my other files and the last 2 are strictly for my music while djing.

I haven't done one of these before so I don't know if I am even using the correct terminology.

Juke, so you did a "fresh" install. Does this process wipe your harddrive, or did you have to do that manually? Or did it just update the operating system?

It wiped it clean and started over with just the Snow Leopard install.

You have to use Disk Utility in 10.6 Snow Leopard to erase or partition the drive. Then start the install and later you migrate everything over with your backup you made with CCC or SD.

Oh btw, I like CCC of the two but both are excellent. I use Time Machine but since Tiger does not yet have TM, use CCC I guess.

Thanks for the input.

I downloaded Superduper last night and backed up all my files to my hard drive. That was really easy.

I didn't partition the drive.

So I just have to wait for my snow leopard disk to arrive tomorrow and I will do my upgrade.....

When you say you used SD to backup, did you back up to an external drive? Formatting the drive to install Snow Leopard will wipe everything on that drive, backups and all if they are on the internal hard drive.

For what it is worth, nowadays we all need a system backed up somehow and best way is to an external drive connected by Firewire or USB. The you can clone with SD and the external will be bootable. Format the internal, install Snow Leopard, connect external and use Migration Assistant to copy everything over.

Hi Harry, after rereading my last post, your question is very obvious. Yes, I backed up everything to an external hard drive connected via firewire. I should have said so.

I am assuming I have a "clone" on the external as I copied the entire HD. It looks exactly the same as my internal drive. Is there a way to find out if my backup is bootable? Or is that unnecessary as long I have have backed up everything?

Sure. Connect the external, go into System preferences > Startup Disk, and select it and restart. SD is bootable. In my opinion the registered version ($29) is great value as you can then do a weekly update of your operating system to the external.

When SL is up and running, consider formatting the external and cloning SL.

Harry, thanks for the instructions. And yes, I was able to boot up the computer from the external.

So I am ready to install SL.

Do you recommend I do a clean install of SL or an archive and install?