The Ultimate macOS Thread

Awesome, thanks. This is a free version though, I'll assume it works just as fine without shelling out any money.

Yeah basically paid vs free is the paid one will let you say a week from now, say "ok I have added more files to my computer, add them to my drive now." and it will find them all for you.


edit: I have made helpful screenshots
Screenshot2009-09-01at44413AM.png

Picture1-3.png

My main hard drive with snow leopard, then rebooted from my partitioned external that has a copy of it with regular leopard
 
Last edited:
Cool. I have some data on my external drive already and never partitioned it . I did the backup as an image and saved it on the drive, I can't boot from that the way you can. Correct?
 
You cannot boot from a disk image, to use it as a boot disk in case something goes wrong, you will have to reboot from the installation DVD, fire Disk Utility and Restore the disk image on a physical partition.
 
I'm gonna purchase another drive (with a firewire connection) and make a bootable backup.
 
Does the drive have to be bootable to being with. Or can I make it bootable when I partition it. I know I sound like such a noob.

Any recommendations on what I should buy?
 
You can make the drive bootable when you format it from the Mac.

As for what to buy, I think they are all quite similar these days.
 
You can partition it in disk utilities in the utilities folder, superduper can erase it for you.. Using superduper to make it bootable is pretty much the default settings for the app (copy hd to whatever drive/partition, backup- all files, erase whatever drive/partition and copy files)
 
I picked up a my book with a firewire connection (mac edition or something). 1TB of storage, which is way more than I need.

I figure I will have one partition for my macbook, I'll make it like 100GB (current drive is 80GB). And then create another partition for my G5, which I don't use anymore but I have some important data. So another 100GB for that. And then maybe make 2 or 3 more partitions with the other 800GB of space or so.

It's possible to do this, right? And when I partition in Disk utility, do I need to make it a GUID partition (or something like that, I can't recall...was browsing it last night).

Edit
Or would that be too many partitions? Can I create 2 partitions of 100GB or so and leave the rest unallocated, and then partition it later? (Without losing any of the data from the first 2 partitions).
 
Last edited:
I think you can make as many partitions as you want. My drive only has two and the other side has non-os stuff so Idk personally.
 
Woo! Snow came today. There seems to be a nice performance/speed increase so far, and I haven't run in to any incompatibility issues yet. I like the refined Expos?, and I love how you can now scroll and navigate folders in the stacks! :D

The only meh is the base 10 measurements. <_<
 
My mac story:
My macbook hard drive has crashed twice within 1 year=bad
Hard drive was replaced both times. The second time, it was replaced within 1 hour=good
Cost for all the service
Apple Care: around $200
Priority Service pack (gets my computer fixed immediately): $100
 
Bad luck or abuse? We've had something like 5 Books in the past several years with 0 trouble.
 
I would have to guess bad luck. Just last week I had my first hard drive failure on any computer ever, and I've used some pretty old computers.
 
Thanks for the help everyone! I successfully booted from my external hard drive. Snow Leopard has been installed, took about 45 minutes. Only had to click like 2 buttons the whole time. Sweet.
 
Thanks for the help everyone! I successfully booted from my external hard drive. Snow Leopard has been installed, took about 45 minutes. Only had to click like 2 buttons the whole time. Sweet.

So did you do a clean install, or not? If not, did everything integrate or what have you, all the old stuff migrate or whatever?
 
So did you do a clean install, or not? If not, did everything integrate or what have you, all the old stuff migrate or whatever?

I didn't do a clean install. Just popped in the DVD and ran it. All my files appear in tact, mailbox as it was. Bookmarks still there. WiFi still recognized. I don't really have much software, and haven't done any further testing.
 
Excellent, I guess I'll buy the update myself. They say you get 7GB of disk space back (or maybe that's just cos of the change to base 10 ;) ). I think I can stretch to $30.

Edit: I have acquired iLife, so I have Garage band and iWork etc, I also have QT Pro so all that stuff will stay in tact and I won't have to (re)register, (re)enter passwords etc, will I?
 
Last edited:
Firecat: Good to hear everything went well! I should install my Snow Leopard today if I have enough time ^^

nouseforaname90: First generation MacBook with a 60 or 80GB drive? Those were real lemons, the hard drives fitted were a bad series of Seagates which failed all the time and Apple kept replacing them with the same series until one day when they switched to Fujitsu. I went through 3 disks with my old black MacBook :-D Same with the top case, break all the time, and I think it's a problem that still exists with newer generations of white/black MacBook, thanks god they switched to Aluminium...
Also big problem with the first generations: Batteries, I went through 5 (FIVE) batteries during my time with the MacBook :-D
AppleCare: money well spent on this one...
 
Top