Terrified of upgrading to Snow Leopard

I will say this, when backing up you probably don't want much else plugged in other than keyboard and mouse. USB is slow enough as is with keyboard and mouse attached. Once done with the backup, you can plug everything else in. Do not get USB 3, as that's got many more compatibility issues than USB 2. As price is an obstacle, try to get the cheapest USB 2 drive with no backup software included. You can use Carbon Copy Cloner as backup software for a measly $5.

Whatever best fits the budget and needs of the OP.

I have "bare drives" I wanted to re-use (get them out of questionable WD cases with questionable control cards interfaces).

Look on Wikipedia, they give you the version history of every Apple application.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ILife#Releases_and_history

I'm pretty sure the Snow upgrade will not remove your iLife apps, but someone else will have to confirm that. As for USB ports, you could always buy a powered USB hub. More expense I know. Or since you won't be needing to have the backup plugged in constantly, you could just temporarily unplug one of the other items for the duration of the backup. A first backup will take a while, especially over USB, but further backups, which will only be incremental, won't take very long.

I suggested the Samsung USB external because of how inexpensive it is. To get Firewire, which would be preferable, since it's much faster, will be more expensive.

Carbon Copy Cloner is a great backup program. What's also good about making a clone (as opposed to just backing up your files or using Time Machine -- only available beginning with Leopard), is that it will be bootable, i.e. you can run off the external (albeit slowly from USB) if necessary.

If you open the Applications folder and highlight the app by (clicking only once) for which you want to get the version, it should give you the version # of the app. If it's still unclear, do a GetInfo.

You don't need to worry about serial ata etc.. when buying an external HD. They will all work. Buying from macsales, macmall, or another mac specific retailer will pretty much ensure that it will work out of the box. Some hd's may come formatted for a PC which would require you to reformat them. The one you posted would be fine, but it's way bigger than you need and more expensive becasue it has USB, FW, and eSATA. You'd be paying for a bunch of interfaces you don't need. You'd be better off with a USB hub and a USB drive.

Your backups may take longer using USB on a Mac with a bunch f USB device attached, but if you start the backyo when you go to sleep at night, it should be done in the morning.

It isn't a bad drive, but for the money you can get two external USB 2 hard drives, and have a better backup system once backed up to both. The odds of the internal and two drives all failing simultaneously when you only hook up one external at a time are much less.

If you want Firewire in an external, you can buy an enclosure separately and then install a drive. It will take approx a half hour to do this. It will be less expensive than an "off the shelf" external. Just needs a phillips screwdriver.

This enclosure (Firewire 400 / USB 2.0 -- your Mac has two FW 400 ports) at $40 is reliable and Mac compatible. I have two of them.

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/MEFW934FWU2K/

Then you find a drive, which will just slide in to connect. No connectors to worry about.

You want a 3.5" SATA drive. Drive prices spiked due to the flooding in Thailand last year, but they are beginning to come back down. You should be able to find something decent for maybe ~$50 by the time you are ready. You can post back for suggestions then. Newegg always has bargains and special promotions, which you get if you subscribe to their newsletter.

I'm pretty sure the Snow upgrade will not remove your iLife apps, but someone else will have to confirm that.

A Snow Leopard retail 10.6.3 upgrade will not remove previous iLife versions, but there is no copy on the disks.

If he erases/replaces the drive and installs 10.6.3 fresh, iLife will be gone and either have to be extracted from the previous 10.4/10/5 disks using Pacifist from CharlesSoft or bought again new from the KrapStore, or via a older iLife disk sold other than at Apple now, likely used/Amazon etc.

What I thought. Thanks.

pyewacket wrote:

Okay for the BIG question and concern of mine and probably why I never thought to upgrade from Tiger to Leopard then Snow Leopard in the first place. My "phobia" if you will, is that I'll lose a lot of stuff on my computer...since this computer is five years old you can just imagine all the documents, photos, etc I have..being both a photographer and writer I NEED all the items stored. I'm also concerned about losing some of the other software applications... the software of the scanner, printer, etc, etc etc. And how about the iWork applications like Pages/Keynote and iPhoto which are older versions also. I just don't have the means to really back everything up, such as an external hard drive

pyewacket,

Some of what you say sounds like things I've said but the big difference is I have 5 backups on 5 external harddrives of everything from all of our Macs. We are writers and photographers and have hundreds of thousands of photos and were worried, as you are, about updating.

As others have said above - please, please, please get at least one external HD and backup all your stuff (you can use SuperDuper it's free (or about $25 for the registered version that will allow you to do smart updates after your first backup and I do recommend getting this.)

To answer a few of your compatibility questions specifically --

Mr H is still running Tiger (10.4.11) on his MacBookPro and since Firefox (also free) is no longer issuing updates, I am going to update his system to Snow Leopard this week. I have an iMac running Snow Leopard. Installed on it is a very old version of iPhoto but I have run iPhoto from iLife 09 on my Snow Leopard iMac and it works fine.

Your printer software possibly has been updated by the manufacturer, check it out with them. We were pleased that our 10 year old Epson Stylus Photo 1280 had software updates for Snow Leopard which are available through software update when your printer is connected and you check for updates.

Scanner compatibility is another story. My scanner software is no longer available as an update for Snow Leopard which is what kept us running Tiger on one machine. Folks have suggested VueScan or Twain Sane (free) as possible sources for updated software to me. You might try those as well - I plan to try TS but haven't done so yet.

One feature of Snow Leopard that you will love - quick look allows you to view a photo (or document) which you highlight by simply hitting the space bar. We find this an easy way to open a photo for quick viewing without having to go through Preview.

I saw you asking how to tell what version of an application you have - I'm not sure anyone answered you yet - If you set up your finder window to show items in a list, click on the application name in the application folder and look in the next column, you will see something like this, which is the information about my old iPhoto: