I'm still running Tiger (gasp!) although I got my MBP in Oct '07 w/ the Leopard dvd in the box, I never bothered to upgrade.

However I've been wanting to install Leopard for a couple of weeks now and finally have the spare time to do it (finished interim exams today, yay).

So what is the recommended way of doing this, I understand you can either just 'upgrade' OSX to Leopard or do a clean install. I guess a clean install would be best but since I don't want to loose any of my stuff currently on the HDD, I'd have to make a copy of my HDD so all the files can be put back in place after the installation. Problem is, I only have about 30 GB's left on my MBP. I do have an external 500 GB USB harddisk though. Can I use that?

 

Data loss is extremely unlikely during an OS upgrade, though you should always have your data backed up. Best way to do it with Tiger is just to make a big disk image and stuff all your important data in there, and then copy it to your external drive.

As for an update in place versus an nuke and pave-- in most cases it'll accomplish about the same "quality" of install, though if you've gone through several majors on your current Tiger install (e.g. 10.2->10.3->10.4) it wouldn't be a bad idea to nuke and pave it. However, if the machine came with Tiger on it, I'd just do an update in place.

 

Out of the box it had 10.4.11 and it's still running that, I guess I'll go the upgrade-route then.

Thanks for the quick response, I'll pop in the dvd now and hopefully see you guys in an hour again (how long will this take anyway? I remember routinely formatting and reinstalling XP on my PC every 6 months and that used to take like half a day lol...).

 

I reformatted my MBP (leapard) monday morning before sending it back to apple - hour and a half I think.

 

Update in place takes around 30-40 minutes on most machines. Nuke/Pave is about 90 min.

 

It lives!

Everything went super smooth and all my files are still here.

Thanks for the help guys.

 

Congrats. Updated to leopard in the spring or something and I reaaaally dig the quick look. Just highlight a file, folder or document and press space

 

How good is Simba tech support guys? seriously.