I thought I’d do a series of articles as I begin preparing for the Leopard upgrade. This is where my windows bias shows through. I was talking to a very knowledgeable Apple friend, Gabe Wilson, and explaining how I was backing everything up and printing out copies of all my license codes so I could do the “big upgrade.” As he watched me his face showed first dismay, then pity, then humor. Finally he relieved me of my suffering. “Dave. It’s a Mac. Don’t wipe your drive. Just upgrade.”
Huh!?
I’m used to windows upgrades. When you upgrade a windows machine you first remove the hard drive then you drive a stake through it (preferably made of silver). Then you pour acid over it and proceed to make all the necessary incantations (which include multiple recitations of random letters and numbers in groups of four). Finally, you put in the install disk and pray to all that is nerdy that the rest of your PC components don’t declare an absolute mutiny (which will probably happen anyway). You then spend the next two days attempting to convince Microsoft that you should be allowed to re-install Office on the new version of their windows software without spending another $500.
Tonight I listened to Steve Stanger confirm Gabe’s sage advice and I’m sold. I’m not going to do the 3 days of reinstall but instead just going to click “update” and see what happens. If it doesn’t work I can always do the “root canal” version of the upgrade later.
I agree with this approach. I’m using superduper to back up my entire HD to a back up drive, then doing the “upgrade” on the primary drive. If all works as I hope it will, I’ll be done. Should it not, I’ll try an archive install on the primary drive. If that too, fails, I’ll wipe the drive and do a fresh install of leopard, and try to recover my mail and files from the backup drive.
I am very very hopeful that the simple upgrade works, though. It would make life much simpler.
Kenny
I agree with this approach. I’m using superduper to back up my entire HD to a back up drive, then doing the “upgrade” on the primary drive. If all works as I hope it will, I’ll be done. Should it not, I’ll try an archive install on the primary drive. If that too, fails, I’ll wipe the drive and do a fresh install of leopard, and try to recover my mail and files from the backup drive.
I am very very hopeful that the simple upgrade works, though. It would make life much simpler.
Kenny
I agree with this approach. I’m using superduper to back up my entire HD to a back up drive, then doing the “upgrade” on the primary drive. If all works as I hope it will, I’ll be done. Should it not, I’ll try an archive install on the primary drive. If that too, fails, I’ll wipe the drive and do a fresh install of leopard, and try to recover my mail and files from the backup drive.
I am very very hopeful that the simple upgrade works, though. It would make life much simpler.
Kenny
I agree with this approach. I’m using superduper to back up my entire HD to a back up drive, then doing the “upgrade” on the primary drive. If all works as I hope it will, I’ll be done. Should it not, I’ll try an archive install on the primary drive. If that too, fails, I’ll wipe the drive and do a fresh install of leopard, and try to recover my mail and files from the backup drive.
I am very very hopeful that the simple upgrade works, though. It would make life much simpler.
Kenny
I agree with this approach. I’m using superduper to back up my entire HD to a back up drive, then doing the “upgrade” on the primary drive. If all works as I hope it will, I’ll be done. Should it not, I’ll try an archive install on the primary drive. If that too, fails, I’ll wipe the drive and do a fresh install of leopard, and try to recover my mail and files from the backup drive.
I am very very hopeful that the simple upgrade works, though. It would make life much simpler.
Kenny