Tiger (10.4.11) upgrading to Snow Leopard (10.6) without iLife/iWork

As to backup methods, read this: https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-3045

I prefer a bootable clone to TM, but you can choose.

As to iLife ... You can buy iLife disks for under $100 that will fill in where the 10.6.x retail disk leaves off. Others may have better ideas.

As to "Clean Install" ... The SL Retail disk *can* upgrade in-place, but making large jumps like 10.4 to 10.6 do not always work. Many report that even a small hop like 10.5 to 10.6 need to be done as "format/at-least-erase the partition before install instead of in-place upgrade". With 10.4 you may be better off just erasing the partition first and saving yourself the troubled upgrade.

GuyWhoWantsHelp wrote:

Is iLife necessary to the upgrade, will the applications i currently have still be there when i install snow leopard?

The "retail Snow Leoaprd" does not have the "extras". SL disks that came with systems had "Disk 2" with applications.

GuyWhoWantsHelp wrote:

"format/at-least-erase the partition before install instead of in-place upgrade". With 10.4 you may be better off just erasing the partition first and saving yourself the troubled upgrade."

Im not quite sure what you mean by this. Does this mean i have to wipe the hard drive before installation?

If you simply upgrade the existing Tiger install, the SL system changes may or may not replace everything necessary. Some user report success, others report very odd irregularities.

Some have no choice but to erase the partition and start with just SL, then use MigrationAssistant to copy user-specific settings.

Finder > Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility

Every disk, Mac or Windows needs two parts ... a "partition map" which tracks "partitions", and "partitions" which are the blocks of disk space.

Mac uses a GUID partition map (although Tiger may use ApplePartitionMap -- that is worth another question in the forum if someone else does not answer it). The partitions are structured as "HFS+".

Using DiskUtility, you can see how your system is setup. This is my disk, with 1 partition (type Extended Journaled which is also called HFS+) and the disk overall is GUID (see the bottom of the image).

If you want to erase the partition, select "Macintosh HD" in the left column and "Erase" above.

This display will tell you if Tiger uses GUID/ExtendedJournaled or not.

So is it GUID/ExtendedJournaled? Or do you need to format it?

Cool.

Start with the backup. That is always the first step in an upgrade. Clone or TM, your choice, but I advise CarbonCopyClone to an external drive for easier rebuild if required.

A very clean Tiger install does help I would guess. Much less "junk" to risk system file replacement.

Glad things are good, now.

The tricky thing now is backups. If you overwrite your Tiger backup with current SL, you lose the ability to go back to critical Tiger data.

You should start a new drive for backup of SL. I would, at least.

You have just advanced considerably in ability to manage your Mac.