From SL to Lion

[VitcoMusic]

Hello Everyone,

In order to maintain my .mac mail account (and upgrading to the iCloud) I need upgrade to Lion. I'll be adding a 4th hard drive to my Mac Pro 8 core (2011) for this. SL has been running squeaky clean, so I still intend to do all DP projects on it for the time being. I have two basic questions:

1) Should I clone my SL volume onto the new hard drive (using SuperDuper or equivalent) and then run the Lion upgrade, or could I simply use migration assistant when formatting the new hard drive for Lion?

2) For the new hard drive, I've used the Seagate Barracuda drives in the past with no problems. Howeverm I've noticed the warranties are now only 1 year compared to the WD drives which provide a 3 to 5 year warranty. Is the word on the street that the WD drives are more reliable? Or the Hitachi/IBM drives? I buy from Macsales (OWC).

Thanks all,

DV

[mikehalloran]

I am not a fan of SuperDuper! It corrupts too many files for my taste.

Migration assistant or Time Machine - or install from scratch and copy by hand.

I would avoid the current crop of Seagate drives. I speak from experience and there are thousands of complaints about them on the internet that I didn't instigate.

[VitcoMusic]

Thanks Mike. That's what I thought about the Seagate drives. Looks like I'll be going the Migration Assistant route.

DV


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[jjhp3]

fwiw, zero problems with highly recommended super duper. use it every week to back up several drives.
john

[bayswater]

Backup is easy. It's the restoral that matters.

Mike, what sort of problems have you seen? Is it just that some files are not copied properly? I've been using Time Machine for a while now but still do the occasional fixed backup with SuperDuper. Are these backups not reliable?

[mikehalloran]

After OS 10.4, when I run tests on SD! clones, I find problems with anywhere from 20 to hundreds of files. Admittedly, I run some pretty finicky tests. Most of the corrupt files are preferences or directory but not all. Easily fixed but time consuming. Migration Assistant and Time Machine don't give me this grief.

Reliability? I don't want to take the chance.

For that reason, I stopped using it for anything other than speed testing.

The school computers I maintain are mostly G3 iMacs running 10.4.11 - I couldn't live without SD! as everything else is slower.

[Welknownd]

I'd rather buy a Hitachi drive. As far as I've heard they are pretty reliable.

[mikehalloran]

I'd rather buy a Hitachi drive. As far as I've heard they are pretty reliable.

Knock yourself out. I don't like them in high heat / low vented housings like iMacs, Time Capsules, MacMini's and the like but, for Mac Pros and many external enclosures, they have a good reputation.

There is an old saying: No one ever got fired for buying IBM. (IBM re-brands Hitachi drives).