[Mac20Q]

I started off with an upgrade on my MacBook because it is the newer machine and I thought a prime candidate for the upgrade, rather than the Nuke and pave.

The networking gave me hassles straight from the start and is still not properly sorted.I am getting an amber light in the Network setting because of a self assigned IP address. With Leopard I had a green light with the same settings. I am getting internet in any case although sometimes the change over from being on the wired network going to the Wifi can be a little less than smooth.

The bigger hassle though was that now and then the applications would not run. I clicked on a dock icon which would bounce a bit then do nothing. The only way to get around this problem once it started and no apps would start, would be to do a restart. It would last another half an hour to an hour and the same again.

The only way forward from that was to do a clean install.... Working great ever since I got all my apps re installed.

I was planning to do a nuke and pave on the iMac 24" and that was uneventful. Well pleased with Snow Leopard now that I have come out of the other side of it.

So what have I learned?
From now on I will be using Appshelf to keep track of my serials. In the application notes I will note whether in is installed with an installer or a drag and drop. Will be great to know exactly what has to be done with each application when I come to it. Can I drag it and drop it or do I have to get out the installer. I will do that as I go to save having to rush when I have a hot upgrade disk in my hand.

Installing to a external drive with a bootable backed up copy of your internal drive is a good idea. If it works alright on that then you can install proper on the computer.
Goes without saying that you have to have backed up everything in any case, and preferably twice. First on a Time machine drive and then with a SuperDuper bootable copy.

How did your upgrade go?

[Simon]

Originally Posted by Mac20Q 

First on a Time machine drive and then with a SuperDuper bootable copy.

For something as critical as a clone, why rely on a commercial third-party app that has caused others trouble in the past? Instead I suggest you use OS X's built-in cloning tool. It's rock solid, it's very fast and it's of course free. You'll find it on every OS X installer DVD and on every OS X installation.

/Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility > Restore.

Select erase destination to get a bootable clone in block-copy mode (fast!).

[Mac20Q]

I will have to give that a try.

I take it you ask the Disk Utility to do a restore from the disk you want to copy - the main hard drive on the computer for example - to the drive that will be your bootable back up?

Let you know how I get on.

As for SuperDuper not had any problems myself with it and I know many that swear by it. I do have the paid version though.

[Simon]

Originally Posted by Mac20Q 

I take it you ask the Disk Utility to do a restore from the disk you want to copy - the main hard drive on the computer for example - to the drive that will be your bootable back up?

Yes. You drag your main partition to source, your backup disk to destination, and you check 'erase destination'. Once it's done the destination disk will be a perfect clone of the source disk. You'll recognize that it even changes name to match the source disk.

As for SuperDuper not had any problems myself with it and I know many that swear by it.

You don't have any problems until you do. Just like so many others.

The problem with clones is that they're absolute. There's no such thing as a clone that almost works. It's either a fully bootable and working clone where every bit is an exact carbon copy or it's not. SD and CCC have a long history of letting people down in critical circumstances. Meanwhile Apple has asr which is an excellent tool, very fast, stable, ubiquitous, and absolutely free. IMHO there's simply no reason to pay for a risky product when the safe one is better and free too. Especially not when it comes to mission critical stuff like cloning and backing up.

[CharlesS]

One thing you could do is do a home-brew Archive and Install:

1. Boot from the install disc.

2. From the Installer, go to the Terminal.

3. cd "/Volumes/<your hard drive name>"

4. mkdir "Previous System"

5. ls -al to list all files at the root of the drive.

6. For each file and folder, mv "<filename>" "Previous System/"

7. Quit the Terminal and install the OS.

8. You now have a completely clean installation, and your data isn't destroyed since it's sitting in the Previous System folder.