OSX Server - installing a second copy

Option 5: None of the above 🙂

Good to see you are testing before jumping into an upgrade.

A much easier option is to simply clone your existing partition to another partition.

Carbon Copy Cloner 3.5

Your other partition could be on the same machine or a different computer (compatible with 10.6.8) so you can test without taking the production server offline.

Once you clone, you can switch back and forth.

If you are running mail, be careful you don't receive mail on your test partition (same goes with other services of course)

Whats nice about the clone, if things go south, you can simply re-clone to your test partition and only the changed files are copied.

Jeff

I wound't recommend TM for a restore.

1. it takes forever

2. if often fails to recover a complete OS and worse with older version (10.6) and with server operating system.

Jeff

I'd have to agree about Time Machine, in theory it is great in practice it can fail with full restores. I wouldn't use it for a server and don't rely on it for migrations unless there is no alternative.

If you don't want to use CCC (which is a great app). You can clone via Disk Utility, use the restore tab to clone one partition to another. The erase option should perform a block copy on 10.6 which is the quickest way to clone a volume. Clone to a disk image if you need to archive the OS with encryption, don't need it bootable or don't have a partition to dedicate to it etc.

I think some Macs that shipped with 10.6.3 can't use the retail DVD (as your no entry sign illustrates). Stick with the original OS if you want to reinstall, but maybe you just need a clone to test how the upgrade works.