10.5.8 to 10.6 Can I use an internal SATA drive in my MacPro for back up..

checkflag wrote:
10.5.8 to 10.6 Can I use an INTERNAL SATA drive in my MacPro for back up.

Of course.

Also.. if doing a clean install of 10.6 how do i restore the backed up apps
without re-registering all of them?

If they require registration after the restore, just do that. Unless the app requires de-authorizing an install because it limits the times you can install it, there is nothing to worry about.

But a much simpler approach is to clone the existing startup drive to the backup one. Then run the Snow Leopard installer on the normal startup drive, which will replace 10.5.6 with 10.6 without disturbing anything else.

A clone is a functional copy of the original, including the internal links & setting that makes it bootable if the original is. Time Machine will not make a clone of a volume, nor will a Finder copy. You can make a clone with the appropriate settings in the "Restore" tab of Disk Utility but many users find purpose-designed cloning utilities easier & simpler to use. The two most popular of these are SuperDuper! & Carbon Copy Cloner. Both are very reliable, easy to use, & well documented.

I prefer SuperDuper! for reasons that are not important here. However, even if you decide to use CCC, I suggest that you download SuperDuper! just to read the extensive documentation that comes with it.