This is reposted from AppleInsider. Though you'd all like a good story:
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Greetings,
I recently did a clean install of Tiger of my PB 1.25, 1GB. I used the erase and install option. My data was backed up on a external FW drive. I had some applications, documents, etc. I also had a backup file created under Panther with Apple's backup for all my settings, preferences, etc. Finally, I had about 7G of music backed up on two DVRs. I backed them up with back up instead of just copying raw files. After install, I ran software update.
After installing Tiger, all went well. I registered and got running, then started restoring data. I opened my settings backup, and got a message saying that "some of the data could not be restored" or something like that, and that backup had to save the data somewhere else. You may see where this is going. So, being the idiot that I am, I chose to save it to my desktop. Backup went to work, creating a file called "users". I restored a lot of settings manually, which was not that much of a problem. I got my desktop picture back, imported photos and documents (etc) from the raw data files. Then I did the same with my music DVDs. Again, backup said that it needed to save the data. It created another user file on the desktop. By this point I had realized that Tiger and info on a previously backed up system did not play well together.
Also, when importing data manually, I accidentally got rid of the regular documents folder at the home level (the one with the white document icon) by replacing it with my other documents folder instead of just transferring the contents. That was an error.
After a few hours of use, I ran a permissions repair, because I find that is needed especially when copying applications. As soon as it was done, my firefox bookmarks were gone. Everything was hosed. All my manually imported data was gone. I restarted and got the stock desktop, dock and system settings. No apps, do data...nothing. It was as if that least few hours never happened. I also got a question mark in the dock with iMovie HD written above it. My system was ****ed.
I realized what the problem was and started over, doing another erase and install. This time I saved the user folders to the firewire drive (I'm assuming the system was confused by two or three folders named "users", no matter where they were). I expanded the music to the firewire drive and manually copied it.
Now everything is great and 10.4.2 is great. Seems more stable than Panther, fixed my multiple Java issues and seems much faster. Before Tiger, System Optimizer and Acquisition would not run. Now they're running well. I love Dashboard and find it useful (call me crazy).
Just a lesson from a veteran Mac user that did something...dumb.
SDW
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