Upgrade from Leopard to Snow Leopard... I need some guidance, please

[Loudyman]

Hi everyone,
Sorry if this has been asked before but I want to upgrade my mac pro (see signature) to Snow Leopard, and I don't really know what to do...your help is welcome.

First, which version should I buy ? :
A)The $29 simple upgrade version
B)The $129 Mac box set

Secondly, can I do a clean install with any versions and could you give me a step by step procedure to do it, please ? (I've never done this before)

Lastly, I saw several comments, on some tutorial videos and articles, talking about the illegality of some upgrade procedure: for example, upgrading a Mac Tiger to Snow Leopard with the $29 version...., just to say that I want to do a clean install of S.L. legally

Thanks by advance,
Loudy.

[Dism]

The box set just come with iLife. If you want/need any of the software in iLife, then get that. (iphoto, imovie, garageband, etc)

The $29 box is all you need if you just want the OS. It's a full installer, so it's not just an upgrade that needs a previously installed OS. I don't know why you apparently can't do that with a machine that had Tiger installed... but either way...

It's a pretty simple procedure. Just pop in the disk, click the icon, reboot the computer and away you go. You can choose to install over Leopard, but I much prefer to wipe the hard drive first and install fresh.

When you boot from the DVD, you can select Disk Utility from the menu bar. From here, you can format your system drive which will wipe everything from it and allow you to install fresh. Just select the disk, click the "Erase" tab, select Mac OS Extended (Journaled) as your format, name it something simple like "Mac" and away you go. (If you have the option, select GUID partition table as well)

Now, you can just install SL completely fresh, and it will take a lot less time than you think. Just follow the on screen instructions and you should be fine.

[Loudyman]

Thank you very much Dism !
I saw in other posts that a complete backup of the mac is recommended, I have some questions on that subject :
1) Is it OK to "put" this backup on a partitioned firewire drive with a partition for the Mac OS' backup and the other for the Protools' session backup ?

2) Why should I keep the old Mac OS (Leopard) and how much time ?
I know that I should keep it if an issue occurs with the new OS, but I don't understand well what are the solutions in this kind of situation... (Boot from the old OS and then, what do you do ?) If someone could give me some examples to better understand this practice, it would be great !

Thanks !

[nst7]

To clarify, Apple offers the $29 upgrade to Snow Leopard if you're upgrading from Leopard. If it's anything older, they tell you to buy the pack with iLife.

It's possible that the Snow Leopard upgrade software would see that there's something older and not install, and people got around this by wiping their drive clean.

You're coming from Leopard, so this is not an issue.

For what it's worth, I recently got Snow Leopard and just chose "upgrade", rather than clean install, and I've had no problems whatsoever.

I just backed up individual items like documents, photos, etc. in case there were to be a problem. But it wasn't an issue. This is on a 2007 Imac.

[musicman691]

Originally Posted by Loudyman

Thank you very much Dism !
I saw in other posts that a complete backup of the mac is recommended, I have some questions on that subject :
1) Is it OK to "put" this backup on a partitioned firewire drive with a partition for the Mac OS' backup and the other for the Protools' session backup ?

2) Why should I keep the old Mac OS (Leopard) and how much time ?
I know that I should keep it if an issue occurs with the new OS, but I don't understand well what are the solutions in this kind of situation... (Boot from the old OS and then, what do you do ?) If someone could give me some examples to better understand this practice, it would be great !

Thanks !

Your best bet for upgrading to Snow Leopard is to reformat/wipe clean your old hard drive and install SL from scratch. And then re-install PT and all your plugins after that. There's no reason to keep Leopard on the drive at all. And don't use Migration Assistant to move things from your old drive and/or backup to the newly updated SL drive.

[Loudyman]

I've just ordered the $29 box upgrade
Thanks again for your help !
Loudy.

[Alécio Costa]

Hi,
Installed 10.6/10.6.7 over 10.5.8 and it has been fine with PT HD 8.1.1.

Much better system than 10.5.8/PT HD 8.0.5.

I only get an occasional error message when quiting Toast.

If anything else happens, I might inform you here.