Backing up before installing Panther

secret agent mansecret agent man
Posted:
in macOS edited January 2014
I ordered out a 160gb external firewire hard drive, and Panther. I was going to backup all my data to the external HD until I found out that there was a bug with Panther and external HD's.

Here are my questions:



1.) Do I need to format the external hard drive, and if so, how do I format it?



2.) How should I go about backing up my data to the external hard drive? Would you reccomend using a specific program or just dragging all my important files (music, pictures, documents...) onto the hard drive?



3.) In regard to the problem with Panther and the external HD, should I backup while still in Jaguar, do a clean install with Panther, unplug the HD while installing Panther, then plug in the external hard drive once everything is installed and hope for the best?



I will (hopefully) be installing Panther on a Powerbook G4.



Any suggestions or solutions are appreciated.





Thanks in advance.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 8
    turbospeturbospe Posts: 16member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Secret Agent Man

    I ordered out a 160gb external firewire hard drive, and Panther. I was going to backup all my data to the external HD until I found out that there was a bug with Panther and external HD's.

    Here are my questions:



    1.) Do I need to format the external hard drive, and if so, how do I format it?



    2.) How should I go about backing up my data to the external hard drive? Would you reccomend using a specific program or just dragging all my important files (music, pictures, documents...) onto the hard drive?



    3.) In regard to the problem with Panther and the external HD, should I backup while still in Jaguar, do a clean install with Panther, unplug the HD while installing Panther, then plug in the external hard drive once everything is installed and hope for the best?



    I will (hopefully) be installing Panther on a Powerbook G4.



    Any suggestions or solutions are appreciated.





    Thanks in advance.



    1. I use Disk Utility (in the Apps-->Utilities folder) to format my backup drive.



    2. I use pSyncX to back up, but I've never had any trouble with just dragging and dropping my stuff to/from a disk. It may create a permissions problem, but that's easy to fix (again using Disk Utility).



    3. I'd definitely back up first then install Panther (with updates). If your HD chipset is one of the problematic ones, be sure to update the firmware before backing up in Jaguar. Just be sure to have a running, working, stable Panther install before restoring your files from the disk.



    turboSPE
  • Reply 2 of 8
    aquaticaquatic Posts: 5,602member
    Carbon Copy Cloner duplicates the drive exactly.. Good if the drive is blank, annoying if it's not, as it puts OS X's invisible system files everywhere in the same place as the original drive, at root level. So use CCC.
  • Reply 3 of 8
    ipodandimacipodandimac Posts: 3,273member
    i just drag and dropped my home directories onto my external, but most of my large files were already on the external. unless your doing a clean install, you need not worry about backing up though (but still go ahead and do it, i'm jsut saying it worked out better than i thought)
  • Reply 4 of 8
    dale soreldale sorel Posts: 186member
    You really don't need to backup your system. An Archive and Install does basically the same thing with a lot less effort.
  • Reply 5 of 8
    secret agent mansecret agent man Posts: 24member
    Quote:

    You really don't need to backup your system. An Archive and Install does basically the same thing with a lot less effort.



    What exactly is an archive and install, is it an option under installing Panther?
  • Reply 6 of 8
    ebbyebby Posts: 3,110member
    Am I missing something here? Reformatting your hard drive will not fix the firewire bug in panther. It has to do with the communication with specific Oxford firewire 800 chips. If you update to 10.3.1 or higher you should be fine but there is also a firmware update for firewire 800 drives that you can download from whoever made your external drive.



    When I backup, I copy everything except applications. I can always reinstall those and they usually work better if I need to.
  • Reply 7 of 8
    rokrok Posts: 3,519member
    archive and install... nice in theory, but NOTHING takes the place of a clean install (aka "nuke and pave").



    bascially, archive and install does preserve your preferences and settings... problem is, if there's an inconsistency in those settings, especially for third party apps, you can cause a ton of problems once panther tries to work with them. also, if you have had any problems with apps in the past, if the problem resides in the prefs, you'll just carry them right along with you.



    simply put, when you do set up the new drives, get a system going where all of the files you work on are saved to a secondary drive AT ALL TIMES. that way, if anything system-level goes kaput, you can AT LEAST pull the secondary drive you're using for storage and get the files off or transferred to another computer somehow. also, make sure your home directory is backed up on a regular basis. if you have a .mac account, use the idisk backup... unless you're saving work files there, or have a massive email database, your home directory should fit fine.



    if you use CCC, do NOT try to run with two fully-functional systems on the same computer. only use CCC to have a safe temporary and full copy of your boot drive until you're ready to switch to the new drive. i cannot tell you what kind of a mess third party apps get into when they can't discern WHERE the actual legit boot drive resides.
  • Reply 8 of 8
    giantgiant Posts: 6,041member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Secret Agent Man



    3.) In regard to the problem with Panther and the external HD, should I backup while still in Jaguar, do a clean install with Panther, unplug the HD while installing Panther, then plug in the external hard drive once everything is installed and hope for the best?





    Make sure the firmware on the drive is up to date before installing panther, then do what you wrote above but don't connect the drive again until you updated to 10.3.1
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