OSX Update and firewire

[Khuzud]

I've been reading a lot of scary messages on Macintouch about people who update to 10.4.5 and end up with systems in various states of corruption. There's a lot of "conventional wisdom" on the message boards that recommends things like:

- Never let Software Update update your system. Download the Combo Installer and use that instead.

- Always make sure your Firewire drives are disconnected when you do an update, or they can get corrupted.

So, how can I use a Sandbox on my external Firewire drive, if I can't have it connected when I update my system?

[dnanian]

Well, first, I basically disagree with the conventional wisdom. I always let Software Update update my system, and never use the Combo. I also don't obsessively repair permissions unless I have a specific problem that a permission repair will fix. (It's not magic, after all.)

As far as FireWire drives go, there certainly was a problem from 10.2.8 -> 10.3, if you had downlevel firmware. But, if your FireWire firmware is up to date (always check before an update), I haven't had any problems updating with my FireWire drive(s) attached.