Leopard: Upgrade or Clean Install?
Apple’s latest cat has been released into the wild and I’ve been cruising the usual blogs and it looks like a large number of people moving to Leopard have had issues. These issues range from power management problems, applications crashing and kernel panics. One common factor among every Leopard problem was these were the users that decided to “upgrade” their Mac from 10.x to 10.5.
As tempting as it may be to perform an upgrade, I’ve always recommended against it. Upgrading your operating system is very dangerous. The more you have installed, the more complications that might arise. An application that runs as a service or startup item suddenly throws your Mac into a string of errors when you upgrade to 10.5.The alternative is a clean install. This is exactly how it sounds. I personally reccomend buying an external hard drive when you pickup your copy of Leopard, backup your data to that drive and after performing a clean install, migrate your data back over and then use that external drive for your Time Machine backups.
It’s a win-win situation and now Leopard will run with better speed and better compatibility with a clean install. If the upgrade goes right, you’ll lose 2 hours of your evening with a heightened risk of causing harm to your system and its data / stability. A clean install avoids those issues but causes you 5 hours of work to get everything back like it was. A difficult choice but I trust you’ll choose the right path.
Update: For those referencing Gruber’s advice, John just posted this on DF. I know this only references Unsanity’s APE software but my post was intended for novice users that may not know to uninstall system modification software prior to an upgrade. Like I stated in the first paragraph, those that are having issues are the ones that chose to perform an upgrade and not perform a clean install. I’m not saying that an upgrade is a bad idea but you’re more likely to have issues choosing the upgrade path over a clean install. On another note, don’t take one person’s reccomendations as gospel. John’s advice is very well respected by me and others in the industry but always get a second opinion even if John Gruber says an upgrade is the best direction
John Gruber has a different take over at Daring Fireball: make yourself a bootable backup, then perform the default upgrade - as that is Apple’s most tested upgrade path. Or alternatively you could Archive and Install.
I’m going to trust him when I update and do it that way, in the hope that I won’t have to spend hours and hours and hours reinstalling all my applications. It would be a major pain for me to have to do that right now, and would definitely take more than 5 hours. I would probably need to set aside an entire weekend.
And if it does all go wrong, I’ll restore from my backup and try again with a clean install, but it will have to wait until that week between Christmas and New Year’s Eve when I can afford the time.
I have yet to see proof that an upgrade is any more dangerous than an clean install. I have seen more evidence that 3rd party hacks are the problem as Apple blessed files are treated the same regardless of install behavior.
I disagree with your sentiment that the default upgrade install is more dangerous. If it was so, I don’t think Apple would have made it the default. It works well for most users.
I did what John Gruber and many more seasoned mac users suggested: make a backup of your mac contents and do the default upgrade - if it fails, then go on to the clean install with your backup, nothing is lost. If it works, you just saved yourself a whole lot of time. I had Leopard running on my computer in 50 minutes with this method and I’m as happy as I can be.
Unsanity’s APE isues aside, I too disagree that upgrading is any more fraught than a clean install.
I have upgraded many Panther machines to Tiger and hope to upgrade many Tiger machines to Leopard.
Anyway there’s lots of room for error when moving Apps, Documents, not mention Library items back over after a clean install.
An alternative is to clean install Leopard to an external FW drive, boot up off it, then Use Migration Assistant (Best utility ever) to copy over Users, Apps documents settings etc, Finally either repaet the clean reinstall on first machine and migrate everything back again, or, Clone the external onto first machine.
Clean install is the way to go, everything went perfectly.
Of course Gruber isn’t the only available opinion. But dang, re-installing every single app would literally take me 48+ hours. I don’t have that kind of time to lose *unless* an upgrade is going to hose my system anyway. Which is why, no matter how cool the new OS, I don’t upgrade the day the new cat comes out. I wait, watch the forums, find out what problems all the bleeding-edgers with the same system configuration as I’ve got have, and make an informed decision on what update path to take when the time is right for me.
Hi Cheryl. Perhaps I could write a piece on the simplicity of Apple’s framework and how easy it is to install applications. If you perform an “archive and install” during the Leopard installation, all of your applications will be preserved. You may have to reinstall the big ones (if you have these)
Adobe CS3
Microsoft Office
Apple iLife
Apple iWork
Final Cut Studio
Logic
AppleWorks
most shareware applications are just drag and drop. Copy them right over and you’re good to go.
I do appreciate your logic of waiting and for many users, that’s the best decision. Thanks for following up on my comments and I wish you the best of luck when it’s time to move to Leopard. You can email any questions along the way to help@iboughtamac.com and we’ll be sure to give you a hand.