Well, there I was, with a nice brand-new Mac OS X 10.5 install DVD and my trusty original MacBook with its little 60 GB hard drive nearly 3/4 full. Hmm. Wouldn’t it be nice, I thought, to install Leopard on an even bigger, brand-new hard drive?
Laptop computers have usually been notorious for difficulty in changing hard drives. As it happens, however ‘ and this is what motivated me in the first place ‘ the MacBook has an absurdly easy-to-replace hard drive mounting arrangement: all you have to do is take out the battery and the ‘RAM door’ (an L-shaped piece of metal held in place w/ three screws), then simply pull out the hard drive! That’s right, it just plugs into a socket. It’s the damnedest thing I’ve ever seen, computer-wise. As soon as I learned that, I knew I had to have a bigger drive. OWC had a nice one by Hitachi, 160 GB and 7200 rpm, so I ordered it, plus an external 500 GB FireWire/USB hard drive. Can’t be too careful about backups, you know.
I backed up the MacBook’s original hard drive on another external drive, then yanked it out and installed the Hitachi drive. Then I hit the power button, shoved in the Leopard install DVD, and proceeded to format the new drive. The installation went perfectly, the MacBook booted up in Leopard for the first time, yay! And then it happened: ‘DO YOU WISH TO TRANSFER YOUR INFORMATION NOW?’ it asked (or words to that effect).
This would be the point where one hooks up a previous Mac, or in this case my cloned original hard drive, via FireWire and transfers over the old user account (applications, documents, all network settings, etc.). Being a highly experienced Mac veteran with over 20 years experience, I opted for running the Migration Assistant later ‘ what, ME blindly let the software do everything all by itself? Hah! I knew better, having exhaustively researched the installation options beforehand, or so I thought. The problem was, everything I’d read was written by other übergeeks with similar experience, and each one had a different angle for approaching this, even a spiritual approach.
Yes, that’s right, spiritual. The allure of a ‘clean installation’ onto a freshly-wiped hard drive has always been spiritual as well as practical, ensuring the lowest odds for operating system glitches. And this was exactly what I’d done.
I next began moving a few apps and folders over from the clone to the new hard drive on the MacBook. I got Mail up and running, transferred my Safari bookmarks, etc., and then got impatient. This is exactly how one did things in the old days of Mac OS, the kind of trick old hands knew to perform, but it was taking forever. Firing up the Migration Assistant, I tried to migrate everything en masse like the software had offered to do for me in the first place. My advice? DON’T DO THIS. The result, with many twists and work-arounds along the way, was a mess, mainly wonky Finder behavior and apps that wouldn’t launch or needed to be re-registered. What a pain! I knew the initial installation was doomed: with problems like these, what else was messed up that would surface later? Arrghh, time to do it all over again. Only’¦
Only the DVD-ROM drive (Combo optical drive) in the MacBook suddenly didn’t like my Leopard install DVD: no matter how many times I tried, the ‘Erase and Install’ option failed the pre-installation check. One time I watched the progress bar run all the way to 95% before crapping out, and each time I tried this, there was a long wait before the inevitable error message telling me to clean the DVD. Really? So I tried that.
Hahahahaha.I’ll spare you the details, but whatever you do, don’t use toothpaste. [ahem] The rest of this tale involves a trip to Albuquerque to buy a second Leopard install DVD and another three days of high geekery, which I shall mercifully spare you for now. Bottom line again? Do it the way Apple tells you!
For guys like me, growing up technologically with Apple over the years, it takes a profound calm and sense of detachment to follow the defaults (like transferring your information from the git-go). I’m used to doing things the ‘insider’ way, but Apple has been determinedly pushing for mass acceptance, and that means they’re now doing their homework and making more things idiot-proof. I know at least three people with new Macs, not a geek in the bunch, and they all upgraded to Leopard without a hitch!
Your mileage may vary, as the saying goes. Apple is working hard on becoming idiot-proof, but the operating system is still vulnerable to smart people who think they know it all. Maybe I just have too much water under the bridge and just need to relax.
Leopard, by the way, is fantastic. If you have a Mac, go for it. You’ll be glad you did.
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