[jaquarat]

i have a partition on my powerbook's hard drive, running both linux and osx. can i transfer all of my aps (adobe aps, final cut pro, etc.) to my external hard drive, then wipe my powerbook's hard drive clean to remove the partition, then install tiger only, then transfer my aps back to my powerbook from the external hard drive - and expect everything to work ok?

thanks!

[starman]

You know, I could help you, but it might come up under "Tiger support".

I'll tell you this - backup your current OS X hard drive partition to your external drive when you get Tiger using Disk Utility or Carbon Copy Cloner (no sooner or you may lose data such as emails). Tiger's very "I'll pull stuff from another partition" friendly.

Mike

[jaquarat]

Originally Posted by starman

You know, I could help you, but it might come up under "Tiger support".

I'll tell you this - backup your current OS X hard drive partition to your external drive when you get Tiger using Disk Utility or Carbon Copy Cloner (no sooner or you may lose data such as emails). Tiger's very "I'll pull stuff from another partition" friendly.

Mike

sounds good - but i want to take linux off my powerbook's hard drive completely, since i'm not using it at the moment, thereby freeing up all the space that's currently being used by linux for osx, and thereby having a powerbook hard drive with no partition at all.

so i don't really want to "pull stuff from another partition", per se.

can i copy all the osx stuff to my external hard drive, wipe clean my powerbook hard drive, getting rid of the partition, [install tiger - placed in brackets as to deemphasize any "tiger support" character to my question], then transfer the osx contents, aps and all, back to a non-partitioned powerbook hard drive and have it work correctly?

[SLam]

You can use Carbon Copy Cloner to make a clone of your Mac OS X partition. Format your hard drive and clone the clone onto the non-partitioned hard drive. Afterwards, you can install _____ via an Archive and Install.

Be sure to read up on CCC's known issues (at the link provided) before proceeding.

[Millennium]

For the apps you mention, this is actually pretty unlikely to work. Most of the high-end apps -particularly serialized ones- tend to put things necessary for the apps to work in obscure areas of the hard drive.

If an app can be installed via drag-and-drop, then it will probably work with the method you use. If it requires an installer, though, then chances are there's a reason it has one.

[jaquarat]

Originally Posted by Millennium

For the apps you mention, this is actually pretty unlikely to work. Most of the high-end apps -particularly serialized ones- tend to put things necessary for the apps to work in obscure areas of the hard drive.

If an app can be installed via drag-and-drop, then it will probably work with the method you use. If it requires an installer, though, then chances are there's a reason it has one.

millennium,
by "pretty unlikely to work" what are you referring to specifically? the carbon copy cloner method that was mentioned? or am i going to have to reinstall all of my apps regardless of which route i take? (which i'd rather not do since installing takes forever.) or is there some way of departitioning a hard drive by keeping one partition (in my case the osx part) and ditching the other (linux) without affecting the data on the partition kept?

[Millennium]

Actually, the CCC method which SLam mentioned looks OK. Keep in mind, though, that it doesn't actually upgrade the OS for you; after the CCC part is done you'll still have to do that on your own.

[sieb]

You can always make a disk-image (.dmg) with Disk Utility and copy it off to an external drive. Note that this will be pretty big, but will include every file. Then later, you can just mount the image and get what you need. This way you wont have to whipe an external drive for CC to take over (but you won't be able to target boot from it like with a CC'd drive).

[eggman]

Originally Posted by sieb

You can always make a disk-image (.dmg) with Disk Utility and copy it off to an external drive. Note that this will be pretty big, but will include every file. Then later, you can just mount the image and get what you need. This way you wont have to whipe an external drive for CC to take over (but you won't be able to target boot from it like with a CC'd drive).

Yes, but you still have to make sure that you transfer all the bits and pieces programs require that may be stashed away in /Library/Application Support and /Library/Internet Plug-Ins and ~/Library/Application Support and lord-knows-where else.

I endorse cloning the disk (which creates a fully bootable copy), repartitioning, and re-cloning back. Then an Archive and Install of Tiger will keep everything you want and need (without having to try to hunt down all the stray pieces yourself, manually) and give you a full install of Tiger.