Mac OS X forum: Advice Sought: How to install Snow Leopard on Tiger Macbook?

OK MrMacFixIt, thanks for your response.

<div>You suggest that a clean install (ie formatting the disc) is not actually necessary. OK then. I just thought it would ensure everything is clean and perfect without any left over junk from 4 years of use.

Can you clarify something you wrote please? Can my itunes content be spread across different hard drives? eg some of it locally (the stuff I like to have available most of the time) and some of it on an external hard drive only available when I connect to that drive. Is this possible? As I was under the impression that there was only one single location that could be the 'home' for the itunes content.
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My 80G hard drive has 12G free. I'm pretty sure this is not ideal. I get the spinning wheel a fair bit and wonder if this is related. If you have any suggestions of how to identify what to delete so as to free up space, then that would be great. Perhaps some application exists that will assist? People have suggested that the Downloads directory could be a candidate - how do i identify this directory? I can't see one called 'downloads'.

I already have 2 external hard drives and will be using one to make a bootable backup of my main hard drive, as suggested in various articles.

Thanks again

One way to do what you want is to copy the entire iTunes folder to an external drive after having consolidated the library.
In iTunes, File > Library > Organize Library and then choose Consolidate Files. This copies all your music into the iTunes Library.

Launch iTunes while holding down the Option key. iTunes will prompt for a location. Navigate to the location of the iTunes folder on the external drive. The one you just copied.
Make sure that all the tracks play.
Quit iTunes.
Relaunch, holding down the option key. This time choose the library on the internal drive. Delete all the tracks that you do not want on the Macbook.
I believe there is a piece of software that will manage this process for you, multiple libraries, but I don't recall what the name of it is.
Google for it.

On the subject of cut and paste. If you click on the icon to the right of the Smiley in the text box, formatting will be turned off and cut and paste will work as needed.

P

yes, i too am kind of happy - and it's part of the reason i'm nervous to do anything drastic such as this.
but yes, i'm going to give it a go.
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I'm not a heavy user - I don't download and watch lots of movies, games etc, and I usually switch the machine off at the end of the day. Perhaps this has increased its lifespan. Even the battery is still working well; i had thought that the Macbook battery back then wasn't one that lasted.

Have to be honest though, I know technology moves on quickly, but I would expect a Mac to last 5 years or so. What are we paying for if its not build quality in both the OS and the hardware?



Incidentally, I finally found a couple of excellent articles on the subject of performing a clean install of Snow Leopard. I'd like to post here (just for anyone else interested), but Copy'n'Paste seems to be disabled in this forum, is that right? At least it's not working for me. So how can I include these three links I've found?



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http://blog.jeff-owens.com/mac-osx/snow-leopard-clean-install-tutorial/
http://www.cultofmac.com/15141/how-to-upgrade-to-snow-leopard-the-right-way/
http://www.brighthub.com/computing/mac-platform/articles/48163.aspx
http://snowleopardtips.net/tutorials/how-to-do-a-clean-installation-of-snow-leopard.html