Upgrading to Mountain Lion Mid-Project

[gspin]

Yes, I know this is a big no-no... but I am having a hard time resisting.
I am running DP7.24 with OS 10.6.8 on a 2009 Mac Pro.
There are a few plugs (mainly Native Instruments things) that need at least 10.7. I know 7.24 and these plugs run very well on my Retina MBP so my question is how complicated and risky would it be to upgrade to Mountain Lion on my Mac Pro?
I forget whether I would need to re-authorize plugins etc....

Any advice would be most appreciated

gspin

[MIDI Life Crisis]

It went smoothly for me going from SL to ML and jumping Lion completely. DP probably will ask for your DP7 disc. DP8 will probably just authorize over the net if you end up there. Adobe stuff always wants to be redone (older Adobe stuff might not work in ML) and you do want to be sure no other critical software will go south. Quicken has a patch for ML. Quickeys doesn't but it works fine.

Make a backup of your original system. I simply migrated from a Time Machine disk and it was flawless.

[Kubi]

Be careful re. unintended consequences, i.e. apps that you forgot are running under Rosetta. As Mike says, be sure to clone, and then clone some more, before jumping!

I'd make a bootable clone using SuperDuper in addition to any time machine backups. Since you are mid-project, in case of a problem that would allow you to simply restart off the clone, without having to restore, and immediately continue working. Depending on your deadlines that option could be a life saver.

[gspin]

Thanks for the replies guys. Thinking through, it really boils down to NI Battery 4. Battery 4 runs perfectly on 10.6.8 but the silly NI Service Center needs 10.7 and up to authorize it. So I can't save patches etc. But for this I would stay with 10.6.8 (and may do so). Of course I have authorized Battery 4 on my new Retina MBP (which in turn doesn't yet have a lot of my other plugs).... Not a huge issue for sure..

But thanks for the suggestions

gspin

[jbyerly1]

I went from 10.6.8 to 10.8.3 and was flawless as far as plugs. I have Komplete 7 and it's behaving. I had issues with the Euphonix drivers stopping the Apogee driver from operating correctly. Once I figured that out everything ran smooth and has since. Almost zero crashes.

One thing this did do was fix the repeating list that came every time I ran disk repair. I could never figure out where these came from as they were there when I recieved my computer from Sweetwater. Never been a problem though.

[toodamnhip]

I too have not moved to ML yet.
The concept of “in the middle of projects” is crazy man, I am ALWAYS in the middle of 5-6 records.
There will never be a good time for something like this for me and many here.

So, the best recommendation is make sure you can spare 2 two days fixing and testing should anything go wrong. And then, hopefully, it will only take a couple hrs testing, re-authorizing this and that, etc.

I have yet to confront this but I know I have to do it soon.
Never shoot for “ no projects to finish”, this never happens.

[daniel.sneed]

Not a glitch here going from SL to ML.
IMOE, this is the smoothest upgrade ever.
All my plugs do play fine in ML.
Only a few are still stuck in 32bit though.

[mikehalloran]

I'd make a bootable clone using SuperDuper in addition to any time machine backups

A waste of time and resources but, if you have a spare hard drive, it does no harm. Otherwise, Time Machine can do a complete restore of your original system if you decide this was a mistake. A restore will ask for reauthorization from the CD.

e careful re. unintended consequences, i.e. apps that you forgot are running under Rosetta.

Yes. Big time. Everyone I know had some plug or other that no longer worked. A few of mine never had updates available. Nothing critical in my case.

If you are upgrading the OS on your main drive, 7.24 will not ask for authorization. In fact, nothing should (doesn't mean that nothing will). 5.13 and 6.03 will run without reauthorization if already installed and working - but you cannot install nor authorize them after 10.6.