Snow Leopard stinks. Can I be saved?

[jayladdin]

So...

A week or so ago, I decided to upgrade to Snow Leopard. Before doing so, of course, I did my neat lil' backup (as I always do) using SuperDuper! because it is, after all, SuperDuper.

I installed Snow Leopard with no problem, and went about my business, which included my every-other-day SmartUpdates of my hard drive to my external HD. Then, after a couple of days, I found an awesome bug in Snow Leopard: when I'm within third-party applications and I try to open or save something from within that application, the application crashes. You can imagine how psyched I am about this. I've spoken to Apple, they seem to be aware that it's a problem and are trying to repair it for the next update to 10.6.2, but until then, I seem to be screwed.

What I'd love to do is go back to plain old Leopard, but I'm thinking I can't do this, because I've made numerous backups of the HD with SuperDuper! since I did the upgrade. Sadly, I think this may be one of those instances where using TimeMachine might have actually been a better plan, as it can take you back to whatever day you'd like, but I'm not sure. So I'm asking you, SuperDuper! staff: is there a way for me to actually do this? I feel like if I go back to regular Leopard and just try to restore from my backup, it'll be all screwed up because that backup now reflects Snow Leopard-specific changes. Is this correct? Is there any solution? Am I making sense at all?

Thanks in advance!

[HackDaBox]

OK,

I am having similar problems here with Snow Leopard and basically you have 3 choices...

(1) wait for 10.6.2 ( apple should not of shipped 10.6.0 )
(2) do a clean install of snow leopard as it will reduce the amount of bugs but wont fix all
(3) try making a backup o your user files only onto an external hdd , then do a clean install of snow leopard and try to migrate the data from your external drive !

I have tried option 3 with apple's Time Machine and Carbon Copy Cloner but they don't work as they clone everything to the external drive including Snow Leopard and when i try migrating the data it says " You cannot migrate your data as you are migrating from a newer operating system "

however the method above will not backup Snow Leopard , just your users and data !

HackDaBox !

[dnanian]

This wouldn't likely work with Time Machine (as you can see from HackDaBox's message) either. The 'right' way to handle this would be to save your 'old OS' backup so you can go back to it... but of course, everything you did since then would be lost unless you restored it manually.

Your best option may be to wait until 10.6.2 is released... that's likely to be the least painful/time consuming option...

You *might* be able to archive-and-install Leopard over Snow Leopard, but I would make SURE you have a GOOD backup of your current setup before you try it.

[HackDaBox]

dnanian i did try a archive-and-install but it just uses a lot of HDD space for the previous OS which is then not bootable and not useable and gives me the same error about not being able to migrate the data from a newer operating system. Thanks for your reply!

thought it might work too but there is good news...

10.6.2 has been released !

HackDaBox !

[JoBoy]

Did you use the Sandbox feature of SuperDuper! or not? If you did make a Sandbox and installed Snow Leopard on it and have made no effort to move Snow Leopard to the Macintosh HD volume, you may still have Leopard on the Macintosh HD volume and your backup will still be the Leopard OS.

As you probably know, Snow Leopard 10.6.2 has been released. So far, I've found it to be extremely smooth and trouble-free.

[chris_johnsen]

Using a sand box to "play with" a new major release of the OS is a bad idea.

Between major releases the bundled applications (Mail, iCal, Address Book, etc.) will often change how they store user data. In addition, there are probably also changes in how System Preferences stores its data (new options, changes to how old options are recorded, etc.). Since both the original OS and the new OS will share user data in a sandbox scenario, any user data that is upgraded to the format that the new OS uses will be unreadable in the old OS.

The problem would be lessened if you do not use any of the built-in application, but even configuration settings made in System Preferences might not be backwards compatible.

Just as examples, I know iCal data from Leopard (10.5) is not backwards compatible with Tiger (10.4). And Tiger's Mail user data is not backwards compatible with Panther (10.3). I do not know if Snow Leopard (10.6) introduces incompatibilities with Leopard, but I would certainly not bet that there are none. I have heard that the Migration Assistant will refuse to migrate user data from installations of newer OS releases, probably because of this backwards compatibility issue.

[JoBoy]

Originally Posted by chris_johnsen

Using a sand box to "play with" a new major release of the OS is a bad idea.

Between major releases the bundled applications (Mail, iCal, Address Book, etc.) will often change how they store user data. In addition, there are probably also changes in how System Preferences stores its data (new options, changes to how old options are recorded, etc.). Since both the original OS and the new OS will share user data in a sandbox scenario, any user data that is upgraded to the format that the new OS uses will be unreadable in the old OS.

The problem would be lessened if you do not use any of the built-in application, but even configuration settings made in System Preferences might not be backwards compatible.

Just as examples, I know iCal data from Leopard (10.5) is not backwards compatible with Tiger (10.4). And Tiger's Mail user data is not backwards compatible with Panther (10.3). I do not know if Snow Leopard (10.6) introduces incompatibilities with Leopard, but I would certainly not bet that there are none. I have heard that the Migration Assistant will refuse to migrate user data from installations of newer OS releases, probably because of this backwards compatibility issue.

I agree with you that backwards incompatibility is a big problem. I don't use any of the bundled applications you mentioned, but the really bad idea is not making the data backwards compatible. I also think that I would go back to a previous system only if all other possibilities had been exhausted. For example, the person who originated this thread might want to check to see if there are updated versions of the applications that aren't working. Non-backwards compatible data generated since "upgrading" to the newer version of an OS will be unavailable regardless of whether or not a Sandbox is used. However, if a Sandbox IS used, and the person hasn't replaced the old system on Macintosh HD by using the procedure on page 38 of the User's Guide, the old system and all data that is backwards compatible will be available without the need to reinstall the old system and use Migration Assistant that may not migrate. Later, after a few updates to the new system, the person may go back to the new, updated system. I don't know whether the data that was not backwards compatible will still be available once the new system is reinstalled, but it might be the only way to preserve all data that has been generated.

Personally, I had a confluence of problems when I upgraded to 10.6.0. A graphics card broke and was replace on warranty. MS Excel 2004 started crashing with data loss. I had a 10.5.8 SD! clone sitting on one of my internal hard drives that had not been updated since upgrading, but I didn't want to go there because it did not contain all the data I had generated since upgrading. I had not used the "page 38" procedure to put system 10.6.0 on Macintosh HD so I decided I would use 10.5.8 on Macintosh HD (or another clone that had been updated from Macintosh HD) if all else failed because those volumes contained all of my current data. I did battle with 10.6.0 and 10.6.1 on the Sandbox and left 10.5.8 on Macintosh HD just in case I needed it. Finally, I upgraded MS Office to the 2008 version and installed another 2Gb RAM. Since that time, I have had zero trouble with any of my apps and Snow Leopard is humming. In fact, I just recently used the "page 38" procedure to put SL on Macintosh HD and, consequently, on my backups. Sandbox was made so that we could have a chance to use new OS and application releases while preserving a way out if things went poorly. It is, however, vulnerable to backwards incompatibility as you have pointed out. For the reasons mentioned above, I still think using Sandbox for major system upgrades is a good practice, but backward compatibility is still a concern.

Probably the safest practice is to not upgrade until a major new release has reached revision x.x.2 or 3. I've followed that practice in the past and have never felt the need to "downgrade." I took a chance with Snow Leopard 10.6.0 and it cost me a lot of time dealing with issues, but, ironically, they turned out to be issues that would have occurred whenever I upgraded.