How do you upgrade your OS?

[ironchef_marc]

Another piece of advice I'd have now that I've done it. It's probably worth buying a new drive, and remove your clone out of your MAC...I made the mistake of leaving mine in and while multi-tasking sure enough I thought I was backing up my projects drive only to realize too late that I had begun cloning my new 10.7.5 over my only 10.6.8 clone. So now there is no going back so hopefully that won't come back to haunt me...

[mikehalloran]

I stopped using TM on a networked backup drive early September after three verification failures and went back to timed backups with SD. There have been no problems with the drive since then.

So what? Those verification failures told you there is a problem with the drive. That you are not finding them elsewhere doesn't mean they aren't there. Unless you have a network problem (and I've never seen that error because of one) TM verification errors indicate a problem with the hard drive - 100% accurate among the 30 systems that I maintain. What fixes the problem? Replacing the drive - again 100%.

The nice thing is that they function as an early warning system - I've never lost data because of this. You see this as a problem with TM? Oh no - it is a major benefit. I and many others would scream to the heavens if Apple ever "fixed" it.

This is a readout of the last two drives that gave me these errors. Note that the simple SMART reports say both passed. BTW, Seagate replaced both drives under warranty when I included these graphs.





These were generated in TechTool Pro. I have no use for any HD utility that can't generate this kind of a report.

[bayswater]

Mike you keep telling me to put my finger back into a live socket. All I can say is what you said: the fact that you can't find a problem with TM doesn't mean there isn't one.

(I did replace the drive. TM still gave errors, and SD and CCC didn't).

[ironchef_marc]

Has anyone ever install an older OS on top of a more recent ones??

My 10.6.8 got erased when I updated to Lion. (I had scheduled back up script that I had forgotten to turn off so I wiped out my 10.6.8. And I really wish I had removed that drive and now find myself wanting to go back to it. Wondering if I could install SL on top of 10.7.5, i.e. downgrade the OS without having to re-install anything?

[bayswater]

Has anyone ever install an older OS on top of a more recent ones??

My 10.6.8 got erased when I updated to Lion. (I had scheduled back up script that I had forgotten to turn off so I wiped out my 10.6.8. And I really wish I had removed that drive and now find myself wanting to go back to it. Wondering if I could install SL on top of 10.7.5, i.e. downgrade the OS without having to re-install anything?

I have installed an older version OS X on top of newer one, but this was some time ago. There was an "Archive and Install" option that was invoked, so all the data in the newer version already on the drive was put in a folder that could be accessed so you could recover things once the older version was re-established. I don't think this really saved a lot of install time and it didn't save any re-authorization time.

If all you want is a SL partition for the occasional pre-intel app, you can add a partition to the end of the drive and install SL on that. No data will be lost by this operation. I kept a SL partition to run a couple of old apps and DP 7, but now with ML and DP 8 etc I find I hardly ever make use of it.

[mikehalloran]

Time Machine would be the most reliable way to go back but I don't see the point.

>If all you want is a SL partition for the occasional pre-intel app, you can add a partition to the end of the drive and install SL on that. No data will be lost by this operation.<

A separate partition is easy to create. Again, you can use Time Machine to restore the apps and files you want to run under SL.

>I kept a SL partition to run a couple of old apps and DP 7, but now with ML and DP 8 etc I find I hardly ever make use of it.<

I have a separate drive that I can pop into my eSATA dock for that purpose with two partitions for 10.6.4 and 10.7.4. I never use it either except for testing. I discovered a lot of SL, Leo and 10.8.0/1 bugs with it, however. DP 7.24 runs great in 10.8.2 for a few projects using old plugs that won't run in JBridge that I need to visit now and then.

I still have a G4 running Tiger/OS 9.2 for certain very old files that I have yet to convert or port over. Every now and then, it gets fired up but not often.