Trying Tiger on Clone

[na goodman]

So, I would like to give Tiger a try but do not want to put it on my main
system. I have an external firewire drive that I have cloned using SD and
I also have a safety clone. Would I apply Tiger to the clone? Also I notice on my clone and safety clone that a number of the applicatons, looks like third party apps are aliases and not the actual app. Does SD clone an alias
associated with the application on my main drive?

[dnanian]

A safety clone shares many applications and files with the main drive -- those are the aliases you're seeing. Totally expected, but please note that it's not a backup for exactly that reason!

It's up to you how you want to try out Tiger. Since it's best to have a full backup, I'd probably try it on the Safety Clone first. If you're happy with it, it's easy enough to install it on your main partition, and you still have a backup.

If you install on your backup, you don't have a backup any more...

[na goodman]

So does the clone also share the applications with the main drive, because I see the aileses there also. Just so I'm clear - if my main drive ever failed, I would be able to boot from the clone and then would I need to install the
applications that were aileses. Is that correct. Thanks for always answering so quickly and explaining things so well. Have a great weekend.

[dnanian]

You shouldn't see aliases on the main drive, "na". Only on a Safety Clone...

A "Backup - all files" copy doesn't create aliases unless the original file being copied *is* an alias.

(Hope your weekend is great too!)

[na goodman]

The aileses are on the clone that is an external drive. I don't think they were always there so maybe I should erase the drive and reclone to the external drive. The main drive does not have the aileses.

[dnanian]

Yeah, it sounds like your backup wasn't a backup - all files but rather a safety clone...