From Leopard to Snow Leopard; is SuperDuper gonna work?

[kirakeerah]

Hi.

I'm sitting here with a fresh Snow Leopard disc, itching to install it, but I wanna make sure I don't lose my data. So I have a few questions;

1. I have an iMac 500GB and 500GB external hd. I have been using Time Machine to backup regularly, but I'm not sure how safe it is to rely on. Is Time Machine safe enough to use when I innstall Snow Leopard? Can I restore my mac's condition exactly as it was in Leopard?

2. If I create a clone of my iMac harddrive in Leopard with SuperDuper, will I be able to copy the clone back on to my iMac harddrive when I have installed Snow Leopard? (My iMac HD has over 418GB of used space...)

3. I read somewhere that the safest was to have one external HD with Time Machine backups and one external HD with a SuperDuper clone... Is this true?

Please help me, I'm confused...


Thank you!

K.

[sjk]

Originally Posted by kirakeerah

2. If I create a clone of my iMac harddrive in Leopard with SuperDuper, will I be able to copy the clone back on to my iMac harddrive when I have installed Snow Leopard? (My iMac HD has over 418GB of used space...)

No. That would overwrite your Snow Leopard install with the Leopard backup, which definitely isn't what you want(!)

In general:

• If you do an upgrade of Leopard to Snow Leopard then most of your Leopard environment will be preserved.

• If you do a new install of Snow Leopard then you can use Migration Assistant to selectively copy data from your Leopard backup to Snow Leopard.

With some searching (on this forum and around the web) you can find instructions to walk you through either method with as much or little detail you need. There might also be some help in the SuperDuper! documentation.

Or, wait for Dave to respond with more specific details/recommendations/warnings since this type of support is common for him so the info is more at his fingertips than mine.

3. I read somewhere that the safest was to have one external HD with Time Machine backups and one external HD with a SuperDuper clone... Is this true?

Yes. Keeping each type of backup isolated on its own drive is recommended for minimizing the risk of problems.

[dnanian]

I can't really vouch for Time Machine, but I'm sure the intention is that you get your Mac's condition back.

The best thing to do is to have both a TM backup and an SD copy (preferably to its own partition or drive, see the FAQ). And then do an upgrade install.