Best OS Upgrade Procedure.
I'm about to upgrade from 10.3.9 to 10.5.6. I'm curious as to what the absolute best way to do it is.
If I just do it the default way, the new OS will install in and around the old one preserving all my work files and folders. This sounds great, but surely it will leave the hard disk dreadfully fragmented and worse, leave the actual system files scattered all over the disk. I know HFS formatted disks under OS-X go some way to looking after fragging issues automatically, but a whole new OS seems like a big ask to me.
I have a couple of external drives so my other option is to make a bootable clone of my internal HD using RsyncX, run the install DVD to install the new OS on that external drive, wipe the internal drive, then, having booted from the external drive with the new OS, RsyncX the whole lot back onto the internal drive - a process which I gather will automatically defrag the data as it goes (since RsyncX builds the clone files contigiously?).
In essence, will my Mac run better if I install the new OS on a blank drive and reload my work files around it or does it make no real difference which way I do it?
Also will RsyncX 2.1 and iDefrag 1.6.9 work with Leopard? I know Leopard has Time Machine, but I gather that won't backup work from one external HD to another external HD which is a function I need.
As ever, any thoughts or advice gratefully received.
If I just do it the default way, the new OS will install in and around the old one preserving all my work files and folders. This sounds great, but surely it will leave the hard disk dreadfully fragmented and worse, leave the actual system files scattered all over the disk. I know HFS formatted disks under OS-X go some way to looking after fragging issues automatically, but a whole new OS seems like a big ask to me.
I have a couple of external drives so my other option is to make a bootable clone of my internal HD using RsyncX, run the install DVD to install the new OS on that external drive, wipe the internal drive, then, having booted from the external drive with the new OS, RsyncX the whole lot back onto the internal drive - a process which I gather will automatically defrag the data as it goes (since RsyncX builds the clone files contigiously?).
In essence, will my Mac run better if I install the new OS on a blank drive and reload my work files around it or does it make no real difference which way I do it?
Also will RsyncX 2.1 and iDefrag 1.6.9 work with Leopard? I know Leopard has Time Machine, but I gather that won't backup work from one external HD to another external HD which is a function I need.
As ever, any thoughts or advice gratefully received.
17" iMac PowerPC G4 1.25Ghz 512MB RAM 80Gb Hard Drive , Mac OS X (10.3.x)
