Upgrading OS

jpwoods · Aug 9, 2012

Don't laugh but I'm still using Tiger.

I'm looking to upgrade to as far as I can go with my polycarbonate iMac (17" iMac5,1).

Can I go to Snow Leopard from Tiger or do I have go to Leopard first? Also do I have to go to Lion before I get to Mountain Lion?

I've heard though that Mountain Lion needs 4GB of Ram and my iMac seems to have a max of 3GB capacity. Does that mean Lion or maybe even Snow Leopard would be the stablest OS for my iMac?

Also what bootable external back-up is most compliant and reliable with my iMac (USB 2.0)?

Thanks for any advice in advance.

RavingMac · Aug 9, 2012

jpwoods said:
Don't laugh but I'm still using Tiger.

I'm looking to upgrade to as far as I can go with my polycarbonate iMac (17" iMac5,1).

Can I go to Snow Leopard from Tiger or do I have go to Leopard first? Also do I have to go to Lion before I get to Mountain Lion?

I've heard though that Mountain Lion needs 4GB of Ram and my iMac seems to have a max of 3GB capacity. Does that mean Lion or maybe even Snow Leopard would be the stablest OS for my iMac?

Also what bootable external back-up is most compliant and reliable with my iMac (USB 2.0)?

Thanks for any advice in advance.

You can upgrade to either Snow Leopard or Lion, but both since Apple no longer officially sells either, you will need to call Apple and see if you can purchase from there diminishing stock (I wouldn't wait long).
Personally, I'd probably go for the Lion USB ($69 was the listed retail).

Mountain Lion is a not supported on your iMac.

Not sure what you mean by your last question; I use Carbon Copy Cloner and have bootable copies of my HD on both external FireWire and USB 2.0 HDs.

jpwoods · Aug 10, 2012

Do I need to be 64 bit by default to take advantage of Lion?

I'm thinking probably the best bet for my mac (imac5,1) is maybe stopping at Snow Leopard?

iOS 5 and CS4 or maybe CS5 is maybe all I can hope for too in terms of reliability of performance to specification.

In terms of making back up of my hard drive which hardware is ranked most reliant and compatible for my usb 2.0 imac? I'd probably be looking for 250gb. Do I need to ensure programs can be rebootable from the external hard drive?

jpwoods · Aug 21, 2012

Optimal OS for imac 5,1

Does my imac 5,1 (kernel version Darwin 8.11.1) boot in 64 bit?

I'm guessing it would be optimal if it did so so as to take full advantage of Snow Leopard OS and higher (I believe imac 5,1 isn't compatible for Mountain Lion though). Is that 4GB Ram is required and the imac 5,1 is only optimised for 3GB Ram?

Is it worth pushing to Lion from Snow Leopard?

Presently using Adobe CS3. Maybe 5 and not 6 is the furthest I can go in terms of stability and speed with my set-up.

Raz0rEdge · Aug 21, 2012

You can go up to Lion on your iMac and depending on how much RAM you currently have, you should max it out to get more life out of the machine.

Do you currently already have Snow Leopard installed? And if that is working well enough, I wouldn't push my luck with Lion..

jpwoods · Aug 21, 2012

Currently Tiger but looking to upgrade to Snow Leopard.

Looking to max the ram to 3GB.

Raz0rEdge · Aug 21, 2012

I think a upgrade to Snow Leopard and 3GB of RAM will give you the best bang for the buck on your iMac.

harryb2448 · Aug 21, 2012

You iMac 5.1 is 64bit architecture no probelms.

Upgrading OS

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