Installing Leopard on second drive

kinnylandrum · Post by **kinnylandrum** » Wed Jan 02, 2008 6:44 am

I'm going to ask a really dumb question, but I know you all will be gentle with me

Can I install Leopard on a second internal hard drive, keeping Tiger (10.4.11) on my system drive and then boot off the Leopard drive when I want to run Leopard? I'm not quite ready to commit to Leopard yet, for a myriad number of reasons, but I want to try it. I hope I don't need a new partition or anything to do it. And I suppose if I can do this, when I install Leopard I should use Archive and Install, right? Anything else I should know? Thanks in advance for any help you can give.

Phil O · Post by **Phil O** » Wed Jan 02, 2008 7:03 am

Yes, you can install Leopard on a second drive without it affecting the OS on the first drive. I'm running Leopard on a second drive right now. Archive and Install? Depends on what you want to do. Does your second drive already have an OS on it? If not, Just do a clean install.

Phil

kinnylandrum · Post by **kinnylandrum** » Wed Jan 02, 2008 7:12 am

Phil O wrote: Archive and Install? Depends on what you want to do. Does your second drive already have an OS on it? If not, Just do a clean install.

Phil

Thanks Phil, that answers my question. No my second drive doesn't have a system, so that's exactly what I'm going to do. Somewhere down the road, months from now, if I want to get rid of the Tiger installation, what do I do then? Any ideas?

Thanks,
Kinny

Phil O · Post by **Phil O** » Wed Jan 02, 2008 7:32 am

Hmm. Two things to consider. When you install OS X, at one point you have the option to transfer files from any existing volumes. You could transfer all your stuff from drive one, but I don't know if it transfers any authorizations. A second thing you could do is use a utility like SuperDuper and clone your drive one to drive two. Then simply update the drive two OS to Leopard. When you're ready to dump Tiger then you can just erase drive one.

Phil

kinnylandrum · Post by **kinnylandrum** » Wed Jan 02, 2008 7:52 am

Sounds a little complicated, but I have Carbon Copy Cloner, so I can just take a big breath when I'm ready and try it. Is that what you intend to do? Meanwhile I'll just enjoy using Leopard. I suppose you just kept all your applications, etc. on the other drive, right?

Phil O · Post by **Phil O** » Wed Jan 02, 2008 8:40 am

kinnylandrum wrote:I suppose you just kept all your applications, etc. on the other drive, right?

Nope. I did the clone and update bit.

Phil

MIDI Life Crisis · Post by **MIDI Life Crisis** » Wed Jan 02, 2008 9:16 am

kinnylandrum wrote:I'm going to ask a really dumb question, but I know you all will be gentle with me Can I install Leopard on a second internal hard drive, keeping Tiger (10.4.11) on my system drive and then boot off the Leopard drive when I want to run Leopard? I'm not quite ready to commit to Leopard yet, for a myriad number of reasons, but I want to try it. I hope I don't need a new partition or anything to do it. And I suppose if I can do this, when I install Leopard I should use Archive and Install, right? Anything else I should know? Thanks in advance for any help you can give.

I did exactly that and once DP was upgraded and my software showed it all worked, I deleted the system from the initial drive. No looking back

Then I used the "old" system drive for Time Machine. Awesome system, IMO. No more trashing preference files or looking on disks when a plug goes south. Just find the last working version in Time Machine and restore. If you get it all working on the new install drive, you might consider wiping the old drive with the Leopard disk utility.

I'm tempted to start a new thread: "HELP! Leopard works great. What did I do wrong?"

MOTUnation.com

Installing Leopard on second drive

Installing Leopard on second drive

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