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Old 02-14-2008, 04:03 PM
idkidd idkidd is offline
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Join Date: Jan 2008
Posts: 6
Leopard Install - Upgrade vs. Archive vs. Erase

In a recent thread, Dave Nanian recommends not bothering with the "Archive" or "Erase" methods of installing Leopard but instead going with the simpler "Upgrade" option. My iMac is 7 months old and I was very happy when I read the recommendation on going with the simpler "upgrade" option as the other two kind of intimidate me (this is my first OS upgrade). I just want to clarify that all I need to do here is use SD! to create a clone of my system on an external drive, make sure I can boot from it, and then proceed using the Leopard disc to run the upgrade?

1) My hard drive has a capacity listed of 148.73GB. Am I right that there is no benefit to setting the space on partition 1 (in which the bootable clone will reside) greater than 150.00GB?

2) I'm going over the SD! instructions on "Backing Up Your Macintosh For The First Time" and, in the section "But, my backup drive is grayed out", it recommends "zeroing" the drive. I'm formatting my external hard drive for the first time and setting up partitions but, in reading instructions on how to do so, I haven't seen info on how to do the zeroing or what exactly this means.

Other than those lingering issues, I think I am good to go. After the upgrade, I will be setting up my 500GB external drive into 3 partitions. Partition 1 will be the SD! bootable back up, the 2nd will house Time Machine, and a 3rd smaller section will be dedicated to video media files. After the Leopard upgrade is successful, should I re-partition the drive and start from scratch since the backup currently on there would be my old Tiger system, just set my system to run the SD! backup over that info, or maybe even wait awhile before wiping out my old Tiger copy to make sure everything is working right?

I'm really excited to get this all set up. Thanks in advance for any your advice/insight!
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