Backup for Mac OS X 10.4.11

Buy an external hard drive in an enclosure (e.g, check on www.macsales.com) that has the capacity or is larger than your internal drive. Avoid the Western Digital enclosures since they have had problems with Macs in the recent past. Use a cloning utility such as Carbon Copy Cloner (exact details on CCC web site) to make a bootable backup of the internal drive to the external.

You need an external Firewire drive to boot a PowerPC Mac computer.

I recommend you do a google search on any external harddrive you are looking at.

I bought a low cost external drive enclosure. When I started having trouble with it, I did a google search and found a lot of complaints about the drive enclosure. I ended up buying a new drive enclosure. On my second go around, I decided to buy a drive enclosure with a good history of working with Macs. The chip set seems to be the key ingredient. The Oxford line of chips seems to be good. I got the Oxford 911.


Has everything interface:
FireWire 800/400 + USB2, + eSATA 'Quad Interface'
&
save a little money interface:
FireWire 400 + USB 2.0
This web page lists both external harddrive types. You may need to scroll to the right to see both.
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/1394/USB/EliteAL/eSATAFW800_FW400USB

The latest the hard drive enclosures support the newer serial ata drives. The drive and closure that I list supports only older parallel ata.

Here is an external hd enclosure.
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20World%20Computing/MEFW91UAL1K/

Here is what one contributor recommended:
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=10452917#10452917

Folks in these Mac forums recommend LaCie, OWC or G-Tech.
Here is a list of recommended drives:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=5564509#5564509

FireWire compared to USB. You will find that FireWire 400 is faster than USB 2.0 when used for a external harddrive connection.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UniversalSerial_Bus#USB_compared_toFireWire
http://www23.tomshardware.com/storageexternal.html

How to format an external harddrive:
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=11095144#11095144

Look at Mac Backup - Mac Backup Software, Hardware, and Guides for Your Mac http://macs.about.com/od/usingyourmac/tp/backuphub.htm
and Mac OS X data backup FAQ http://www.macmaps.com/backup.html Here's a list/description of Mac backup software http://www.pure-mac.com/backup.html

The majority of Mac users use CarbonCopy Cloner @ http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html , or SuperDuper @ http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html . You can also use or the Restore function of Disk Utility included in OS X.

 Cheers, Tom 😉

You need an external Firewire drive to boot a PowerPC Mac computer.

Yes, but the OP's post states:

I am trying to upgrade my OS X version to the Snow Leopard

and:

MacBook Pro Mac OS X (10.4.11)

= not a PPC