New Mac OS X User: What should I not do ? And what should I do?

T

tricky

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:D I am new to OS X. Though a lifelong mac user (shows my age, that means I must be at most...(well I'm 18, to clear that one up;) ), I have not been an OS X user, until now.
In a weeks time I am going to install OS X on my main home computer in order to use a new ipod. The problem is that this computer gets used by my Dad for his work, he needs to be able to use it as soon as possible. I need therefore to know, whether I can install it directly (for the moment) onto an external disk (60 Gb firewire), without affecting the main OS 9 disk.

I also need to know what I should not do (I like to fiddle, which by now means I have a good working knowledge of OS 9, but with other systems tends to mean they stop working! (e.g. windows..)) ? At least for now what should I leave alone, (excluding terminal commands :) ). Help would be gratefully accepted.

Thanks

Tricky
 
You should be able to boot it from the firewire drive, I haven't done it myself but presumably there will be others about who have. Just don't delete anything in the Library folder until you know what it is!
 
If you install it onto the external firewire drive, you should be able to choose to boot from that as you need.
Generally, stay out of Terminal until you really know what you are doing. Aside from that, you shouldn't have any real troubles.
 
Thanks very much. So when I click restart in installer whilst in OS 9 it will then give me an option, once restarted (from CD I assume) to install on another hard disk, it won't just plough on and install?
 
If you home machine is a G4/AGP or later, it will boot from the Firewire.

The installer will list any drives it sees, and you choose which to install it on.

You might want to post what Mac you now have.
 
It will boot from a iMac G3 as well. Although 10.1 was frequently corrupted.
I'm 10.2 has improved that since then.
I have a maxtor and am hoping to add another 20G external hard drive for later.
 
I also have a slot-loading "old-skool" iMac & external Firewire HD (see sig), and can confirm that it is easy to install OS X on the FW drive and boot up from it.
Have a ball! :D
 
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