Tiger Install to FW drive with Safety Clone?

[dpc88]

Hi,

I'm pretty new to all of this. I'm going to be taking the Tiger plunge on my iBook with a 160GB LaCie FW Drive. The laCie has 2 partions - one (40GB) that I just did a Backup - all files onto, and the other has my music library on it.

Should I do a safety clone onto the first partion and erase the complete backup or can I do it in addition to the full backup (I have 23+ GB remaining)? If I have to upgrade to 10.4.2, do I do that also onto the FW drive?

Once I'm happy with the Tiger install, do I do it again onto the HD on my iBook and then do a complete backup and erase onto the FW drive?

thanks in advance for any help/guidance.

[dnanian]

Well, in general it's a very good idea to have *both* a backup and a safety clone, especially when you're making a big change like this.

In your situation, since you don't really have the space to do both (unless you have another drive), I'd suggest making the backup and upgrading to Tiger on the internal drive. The "back out" would be an archive-and-install of Tiger (to retain your data), or a restore (which would lose what you've done since the upgrade). But, it's unlikely you'll run into something that's not fixable at this point.

(Check at Macintouch that any important programs you're using are Tiger compatible, and upgrade them *before* you upgrade to Tiger, though!)

So -- in sum, don't just have a Safety Clone. If you have to choose, make a backup, and upgrade the main drive.

[dpc88]

Dave,

Thanks for the help!