Upgrading to Leopard using a new harddisk

Updated 1 May 2008: Added a link to my post for transferring of bootcamp partition

Just last week, I have upgraded to Leopard on my MacBook using a new harddisk. It just consists of 3 major steps:

1. Replacing the harddisk
2. Installing Leopard and porting of applications between the old harddisk and the new harddisk
3. Updating Leopard
   

Replacing the harddisk
Removing of the harddisk is not really a simple affair though. You would need to prepare 2 things. A screw driver, and allen key.

The screw driver is used to unscrew the 3 screws you see when you remove the MacBook battery. Upon un-screwing the 3 screws, pull out the L bracket and you will be able to see the harddisk on the left hand side.

The allen key is used to unscrew the old harddisk from the "protective covering", and replacing it with the new harddisk. Take note of how to re-insert the harddisk back into the "hole". You might short-circuit your harddisk.

I would suggest to convert your previous harddisk into a removable harddisk. This will be used for porting of your settings to Leopard.

Refer to this youtube video that I've found if you want a visual representation:


Installing Leopard

1. Boot-up your MacBook and hold down the option key. You will see the boot-up menu.
2. Insert your Leopard DVD. You should see the DVD appear in the boot-up menu. Click on the DVD picture
3. Follow the instructions on the DVD.
4. When you reach the section where it is detecting which harddisk to install to, go to the Disk Utility option. This is located at the menu right on top. Format your harddisk using the default settings. Only after formating the harddisk, can you then install Leopard.

It's pretty straightforward. Note that it takes about 20mins to verify your Leopard DVD.

Porting of applications
Upon first boot, it will ask you if you wish to transfer settings. Plug in your removable drive containing your old Tiger settings and follow the instructions for transferring of settings. Time taken varies, depending on the size of your old Tiger installation. Note that System Preferences settings are not ported over.

One thing that I'm truly amazed in is the ease of porting the applications between Tiger and Leopard. That's one thing that Windows can never beat Apple. Transfer of applications is just with a click of the button. All my settings including emails, network, location of dock, etc are all transferred seamlessly!

The only application that could not work was GIMP. Anyway, there's a Leopard version for GIMP. Seems like its more of a GIMP issue than a Leopard issue.

If you have X11 installed, re-install the Leopard Xcode and your X11 applications should work. My Dia works after I re-installed Xcode. The X11 in Xcode resolved quite a few problems for X11 Forwarding. Now I do not get the display anomaly I was getting under Tiger.

Updating Leopard
People might find weird that I dedicated a section to updating Leopard. Reason is because I wasted half a day on it! I thought it was just a simple case of activating the Apple Update and let it do its magic. Boy was I wrong.

Please install the Mac OS X 10.5.2 Combo Update by downloading it from Apple website here. If you use the Apple Update, you will hang at the section where its configuring installation. So far I've seen it happen on a MacBook and a Mac mini.

After installing the Mac OS X 10.5.2 Combo Update from Apple website, you can proceed with using the standard Apple Update.

All in all, I took less than 2 hours (minus the frustrations I had with the apple update) to upgrade Leopard and restore my Mac to its original state, with all my applications including X11.

The other major frustrations I had was with porting of BootCamp partition. That one I will reserve for another article. Refer to this post for the steps. It took me 2 days to figure out how to restore the BootCamp partition without re-installing every single application within it.

Have fun with Leopard... I find Spaces very useful.