Mac question

[Noel Evans]

Not sure if anyone can help me here.

I recently had a thread looking at vid card options. SO new vid card is coming. I am still on MAC OS 10.4.11, due to the fact is I have ongoing project pretty much all the time and have been reluctant to change over to Leopard. But now I have to.

Some facts about my set up.

I run all my projects from drives separate from my OS.
I have an additional drive that runs win xp, setup with bootcamp.


Things I want to do .

1/ Change OS to Leopard
2/ Change the HDD my xp installation is on to another new faster drive.
3/ Replace Vid. Card.

Questions I have before I get started (dont have Leopard or Vid card as yet - later this week)

1/ Does the change to Leopard require reformat of my OS drive?
2/ If I have to reformat, can I back up some apps (like flip4macHD) and plugins (like Natress for FCP)? I know I can back up email etc.
3/ Can I create a mirror of my existing win xp app to the new hdd, then just keep using that under the new Mac OS installation - keeping in mind its a standalone HDD for win xp only? Then use that same win xp under bootcamp in Leopard.

Any help greatly appreciated.

Noel

 

[n8ture]

I upgraded from 10.4 to 10.5, did a clean install with no reformatting of my system drive.
Been just as stable as it was before the upgrade. No problems at all.

Now that I'm on 10.5 I use Time Machine to backup my system drive just in case.

 

[tashbee]

no reformating is required

and for mirroring your xp drive you can use time machine to make a backup and then drop that backup on your new faster drive, makesure everything is working and then reformat your old xp drive

and an upgrade install will just install leopard and not delete any of your files or programs, just change the OS

or a clean install is better but you will have to backup everything on your computer, do a clean install and then replace any programs you need

their is a warning that sometimes the upgrade install might screw up and its better to do a clean install but i did an upgrade one and have had no problems with it

i also dont have super important files and programs so maybe a backup of what you need would be smart

anyways good luck

 

[Noel Evans]

Cheers lads, thanks for the insight.

My Leopard should come today so Ill get that out of the way whilst I wait for the new vid card.

 

[Noel Evans]

Did the Leopard upgrade no problems there at all.

and for mirroring your xp drive you can use time machine to make a backup and then drop that backup on your new faster drive, makesure everything is working and then reformat your old xp drive

Not 100% on the process for backing up a single hdd. Looking into it so I can change my windows over.

 

[Noel Evans]

All done, new card in. Thanks for the input all. BTW, the card works very well.