Panther: upgrade or archive?

S

stokini

Registered
I don't have a second hard drive, and don't want to back up my entire user folder (including 10G of mp3s and several G of photos) to CDs. So Clean Install is out; my options are to use the Upgrade option or the Archive and Install option. Anyone have advice on which is better for stability, freedom from bugs, etc.?
 
If you have the space, do an "archive and install." I think it's better to do one big fresh clean install instead of an "upgrade" and replacement of system parts and such.
 
I'm interested in that question too, because I'll be getting Panther pretty soon (ordered it yesterday from Apple's website). I guess a clean install would be better, because I haven't really used OSX much at all (maybe once or twice) before now, so it's not any trouble for me to do it that way...?
 
I clean install every new operating system I get. Hell, I've got the Application CDs for all my apps, so reinstalling and reupgrading those is no problem. I store my MP3s and photos on a separate drive, so no losses there. Desktop settings, font settings, icon arrangement, that's all personal preference that I think people put way too much emphasis on anyway... easily manipulated/recreated.

I would put my preference in this order:

1) Clean install
2) Archive & Install
3) Upgrade -- ooh, too many problems to go wrong!
 
For an archive and install all the computer does is copy your /Library folder to another folder and then installs the system over that? Or is it both /Library and /System/Library? Because my /Library is 1.24 GB, and I have just under 5GB free on my HD and am waiting for a bit until my mom decides to get panther. Would an archive install work?
Because otherwise I need a Firewire HD ;^)
 
I'm not sure how it works for Panther; I would think it copies and redoes both, because Apple undoubtedly changed the structure of the Library folder quite a bit in Panther. Either way, it won't touch your data.
 
I did an upgrade and it worked fine. however i wonder what an archive would have been like. Can is re-install and do an archive version?
 
You are afraid of losing your MP3s, but what if by some bizarre chance you have a system failure? You will lose some data, so burning those MP3s to CDs or DVDs will be better in the long run.

I find reinstalling all my Apps to be a pain, so i keep them on a separate partition, only 3rd party Apps, all the others stay in the default folder.

Archive and install works fine, but if there are problems in files that are left behind... you will know when the system behaves poorly. I've done this a number of times, moves all the data to a folder in the root directory called "Previous System." Only odd problem i encountered was the problem with deleting that folder within X, sure I could in 9, but X will think the folder is missing and keep giving you incorrect length of some record problems.
 
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