Upgrading from Tiger to Leopard
 

I'm about to upgrade from Mac OS X 10.4.11 to 10.5.4. I've made a current, bootable clone of my drive. I plan to do an "archive & install" with "preserving user and network settings." After the upgrade, I’ll use the upgraded drive for a few weeks to be sure there're no problems or issues. If there're some problematic bugs that do arise that I'm unable to find fixes/patches for, I will restore the drive from my bootable backup using SuperDuper! (using "erase, then copy"). If everything seems to be working fine, can I then update the bootable backup by simply doing a "smart update" using SuperDuper! or would you recommend or advise doing an "erase, then copy"?

I think you already sent this into support, 'robgor', but I'd suggest an erase-then-copy going from Tiger to Leopard, since there are significant file system differences.

I did that, but I have 2 partitions on my external drive. One is still on 10.4.11 from the date I upgraded, and the other is my Leo backups.

I encountered a few things that didn't work - a Brother printer driver, the software for my Logitech wireless keyboard, and worst of all - the complete inability to download files with Firefox 3. Safari also needed an upgrade. I suggest you read the stuff on Firefox (if you USE Firefox) before you do the upgrade and be prepared to remove the 2 .plist files before you start the upgrade process. Maybe even color them for later. They will have to be located and removed after 10.5 is installed.


A good source of Leopard conflicts and solutions is on http://www.macosg.com (site is down today).

Also, as discussed here, when you boot from a Leopard backup, the startup disk may not appear where you expect it (although your Tiger backup will). This is an annoyance, to be sure.

There are a couple of features in Leo that are marvelous.

Also I recommend David Pouge's Missing Manual - Leopard book. Apple doesn't tell you anything.


FWIW,. my own upgrade failed in the middle ands the DVD popped out. When I reinserted it, right after acceptance of the EULA, it picked up where I left off. I don't remember selecting HOW I wanted to upgrade.

After everything was running the way I wanted it, I SuperDuper!'d my new Leo drive via erase and copy, not smart update, but that's just me.

One more thing - repairing permissions the first time took over an hour; now it's down to about a half hour. If you repair permissions when you run SD, don't think it has frozen. It just takes forever. This is a known Leopard issue.

Have fun.