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Leopard pounces, don’t get mauled

By | October 26, 2007, 6:35am PDT

Summary: Today is Leopard day. Apple’s sixth major upgrade to the OS X operating system goes on sale today in the United States at 6 p.m. I’ll be heading to the Apple Store in Atlantic City at 6 to grab my copy of the cat and will install it on my MacBook Pro shortly thereafter. Before diving [...]

Today is Leopard day. Apple’s sixth major upgrade to the OS X operating system goes on sale today in the United States at 6 p.m. I’ll be heading to the Apple Store in Atlantic City at 6 to grab my copy of the cat and will install it on my MacBook Pro shortly thereafter.

Before diving into such a massive upgrade as 10.5.0 there are some precautions that you should heed.

Step 1. Make a full, bootable clone of your current hard drive to an external USB or Firewire HDD. Not just the Documents folder or your Home folder either, clone the entire drive. I use SuperDuper (US$28) for this task because it’s simple and powerful, the Smart Update feature alone is worth the price of admission. Those preferring a free option can use Mike Bombich’s excellent Carbon Copy Cloner 3.

After cloning your drive, test it by booting from it, launching your email client and a couple of your critical documents. If everything seems ok, move on to step 2.

Step 2. Verify your drive’s health. Boot from the DVD that came with your machine and run Disk Utility from the “Utilities” menu. Run Repair Disk on your drive until it comes up with a clean bill of health. If it comes up with lots of errors, run it again. If you don’t have the original DVD, you can run it from Applications/Utilities folder, but the DVD is preferred.

Step 3. Remove all third party preference panes, login items and menu bar items. This goes without saying, but it’s best to uninstall anything that modifies the OS (especially those visual tweaks) and didn’t come from Apple.

Step 4. Instead of installing Leopard “over top,” consider doing an Archive and Install of the new OS. This process automatically moves existing system files to a folder named Previous System, then installs Mac OS X again–from scratch. To save time you can opt to preserve your user and network settings before installing which imports existing users, Home directories, and network settings and skips the Setup Assistant after installation.

For further reading I suggest David Morgensterns’ Planning for a Leopard migration, David Pogue’sMore Goodies in Apple’s New Operating System and Robert Vamosi’s Security features expected within Mac OS X Leopard.

What are you doing to prepare for Leopard?

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Topics

Folder, Network, Operating System, Apple Inc., Leopard, Apple Mac OS X, Apple Mac OS, Operating Systems, DVD, Consumer Electronics, Software, Personal Technology, Home Entertainment, Jason D. O\'Grady

Jason O'Grady is a journalist and author specializing in mobile technology. He has published six books on Apple and mobile gadgets and his PowerPage blog has been publishing for over 15 years.

Disclosure

Jason D. O'Grady

Jason D. O'Grady is the creator and editor of O'Grady's PowerPage, which has been publishing mobile technology news since 1995. He maintains an advertising relationship with the following legacy advertisers on the PowerPage:

  • Amazon Associates
  • Google Adsense
  • Tekserve

    • Advertising on the PowerPage is brokered by a third-party agency (BackBeat Media) and he recuses himself from these negotiations.

Biography

Jason D. O'Grady

Jason D. O'Grady developed an affinity for Apple computers after using the original Lisa, and this affinity turned into a bona-fide obsession when he got the original 128 KB Macintosh in 1984.

He started writing one of the first Web sites about Apple (O'Grady's PowerPage) in 1995 and is considered to be one of the fathers of blogging. He has been a frequent speaker at the Macworld Expo conference and a member of the conference faculty. He also co-founded the first dedicated PowerBook User Group (PPUG) in the United States.

After winning a major legal battle with Apple in 2006, he set the precedent that independent journalists are entitled to the same protections under the First Amendment as members of the mainstream media.

O'Grady is the author of The Nexus One Pocket Guide, The Droid Pocket Guide, The Google Phone Pocket Guide, and The Garmin nuvi Pocket Guide (Peachpit Press), the author of Corporations That Changed the World: Apple Inc. (Greenwood Press), and a contributor to The Mac Bible (Peachpit Press). In addition, he has contributed to numerous Mac publications over the years, including MacWEEK, Macworld, and MacPower (Japan).

When he's not writing about Apple for ZDNet at The Apple Core, he enjoys spending time with his family in New Jersey.

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mvreljxg 357 bwqik
ahomeioy68-24378928392632576310380232050428 24th Nov
To nmfyu, kwwtpydt81, nmfyu.
View in thread
0 Votes
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Is the AC store open?
j.m.galvin 26th Oct 2007
I thought I read that it was closed for remodeling.
0 Votes
+ -
Long time Windoze user goes over to the dark side
bwanapc 26th Oct 2007
As a long time DOS / Windows user I finally got sick of the junk Micro$oft is peddling as an OS, Vista was the last straw. I tried Ubuntu, but wasn't ready for some of the trade offs there. I broke down and bought a MacBook Pro, WOW. Using Vmware Fusion I really have the best of both worlds. Leopard is now installed as well and it blows Vista away without even trying, Faster, prettier, more stable, less intrusive, less controlling. Where Vista feels clunky Leopard feels light and fast. No going back now.
0 Votes
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You do need a mac
Spiritusindomit@... 1st Nov 2007
If you can't even figure out the two clicks it takes to make vista a speed demon.

*adds your name to list of mac troll aliases*
0 Votes
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RE: Leopard pounces, don't get mauled
aussieblnd@... 26th Oct 2007
Here Kitty Kitty!
0 Votes
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correction or clarification to step 2...
i8thecat 26th Oct 2007
"Step 2. Verify your drive?s health. Boot from the DVD that came with your machine and run Disk Utility from the ?Utilities? menu. Run Repair Disk on your drive until it comes up with a clean bill of health. If it comes up with lots of errors, run it again. If you don?t have the original DVD, you can run it from Applications/Utilities folder, but the DVD is preferred"

It is also advisable to repair disk permissions prior to the upgrade, after all, this is a Unix OS and permissions are everything. While you can do this booted to the original DVD, you should NEVER do this from the DVD... Only repair disk permissions while booted into the OS, via disk utility...

For more info on this, see the following KB:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=25751
0 Votes
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RE: Leopard pounces
K4thwright 17th Jan 2008
Leopard works very poorly on my 1.25 GHz DP G4 MDD. I had difficulty installing it
from the DVD until I finally was able (after some fiddling and 3 tries) to put it on
the first partition of one of the hard drives on the 100 MHz bus in the machine.
Software download sometimes hangs, and I have been unable to install more than
one update at a time, i.e., by unchecking all but one of the software updates. I am
reminded of the problems I encountered when OS X first came out. In your poll
about Leopard affection you left out the question that I would have answered: Will
you continue to use the older versions of OS X until the important issues are
solved? I'll use Tiger until my results with Leopard prove to be better, faster, and
more stable on my MDD than they are with Tiger. I expect this to be about 10.5.5,
based on my feeling that OS X moved from being merely a toy to being useful about
at 10.3.6.
Kent
0 Votes
+ -
Re: Correction or Clarification.
K4thwright 17th Jan 2008
In my previous response to Leopard Pounces, I noted that Leopard performs poorly on
my G4 MDD. The Preferences problem is one of the issues I encountered. Trying to
repair preferences from Disk Utility was fruitless. The application churned on for an
hour until I gave up and repaired Preferences from the install disk. I have not tried this
since I installed 10.5.1, but I'm going to give it a try the next time I boot into Leopard.
0 Votes
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RE: Leopard pounces, don't get mauled
tomlin21-24319035676893835085146735905770 11th Oct
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0 Votes
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RE: Leopard pounces, don't get mauled
ahomeioy68-24378928392632576310380232050428 18th Nov
giqput,good luck! it's giqput.
0 Votes
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mvreljxg 357 bwqik
ahomeioy68-24378928392632576310380232050428 24th Nov
To nmfyu, kwwtpydt81, nmfyu.

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