Create New Leopard HD Image and Swap Tiger for Leopard with SD!

[deltau]

I will first confess that I am not a heavy duty Mac guy. I have a MBPro and love it, but my "day" job is programming (in Windows) and I don't spend every spare moment back in front of the computer. I do use Fusion for my VMs, so I could actually help someone with that

Goal: I have 10.4.11 on my MBP and want to upgrade to 10.5.x. However, I can't/don't want to deal with down time, while I get 10.5.x up to speed (re-installs, move data, etc.).

Hypothesis: I have an external, FW800 HD that I would like to create a partition on and install 10.5.x. I would re-install software, load my data (from my MBP or SD!), etc. I would then:
1. make a bootable copy of this partition with SD!
2. backup my current 10.4.11 MBP drive with SD!
3. format current MBP drive
4. Move the 10.5.x SD! image onto the MBP drive.

Question(s):
1. Does this process sound reasonable?
2. Do I even need to use SD! to move my new partition onto a newly formatted drive? Could I use Disk Utility or something?

I hope this doesn't sound like a noob question, but it probably is.

Thanks for your help!

Sean

[dnanian]

Why wouldn't you:

1. Make a backup of 10.4.x onto the FW drive
2. Simply upgrade your Tiger system to Leopard

If you're unhappy, you can always restore the Tiger install and do something more elaborate...

[deltau]

Sure. I guess I thought a clean install would be worthwhile, for one. And with that said, if I could setup and configure Leopard on my own time table, without sacrificing my current workspace, that would be good. Then, when the Leopard image is ready, move it over.

I'm also reading on the web that I could just create this Leopard partition and then create a disk image and restore from that, erasing the internal drive in the process. Does that sound reasonable?

Thanks for your input on this. Not sure where else I would go, off the top of my head, to discuss this.

BTW...love SD! I run it with smart update and it just works. Gotta love that!

Sean

[dnanian]

I just don't think that you're going to have a lot of trouble with Leopard, given the current updates; I could be wrong, of course (and then you could restore and proceed with your plan), but I think it's going to work for you unless you have some very specific requirements...

[deltau]

So the upgrade to Leopard is pretty clean, eh? That sounds great!

Thanks!

Sean

[dnanian]

At this point, we're four updates in and most of the larger problems have been dealt with.

[sgmiller]

Dude.....just do what is suggested and upgrade Tiger to Leopard. I know alot of people suggest various forms of "clean" installs but I think it is a hangover from Windows. I actually accidentally did an upgrade instead of a clean install and I was pleasant surprised to find out that it went perfectly.

[deltau]

Well, I upgraded 10.4.11 to 10.5.4 and so far, so good! Love Apple! I don't think it would have ever gone as well on a Windows machine - sgmiller. I had to upgrade my VMWare Fusion to 1.1.3, but that has been out and stable for a while too.

Question...Can I just resume my previous "Smart Update" or should I create a new location for my 10.5.4 SD! backup? I have a .dmg from 10.4.11 before the upgrade, so I have a restore point for a few days. Just didn't know if there was a best practice here.

Thanks again for the feedback.

[dnanian]

I'd actually do an erase-then-copy for a first-time backup when the file system is this different.