Comments on: Uninstalling Leopard on a Mac

By: Bill Cole

Bill Cole — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 07:51:08 +0000

@Doug Miller: Thanks for the correction; I didn’t know that Intel Macs could boot from USB. On the other hand, when you start talking about GUID partition, you have passed my pay grade.

@Joe Belkin: Thanks for bringing that FREE service on the part of Apple to our attention.

By: joe belkin

joe belkin — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 06:35:40 +0000

On the note about re-installing Tiger, PC users might find this hard to believe but you can take your discs to an Apple store and they will install for FREE for you. Yes, that’s right. FREE. All you have to do is make an appointment and ask nicely.

By: Doug Miller

Doug Miller — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 03:22:10 +0000

@ Bill Cole: I have an Intel MacBook, and I can boot with both a Firewire and a USB external disk. So long as the disk is partitioned with the GUID, it can be a boot device on an Intel Mac. The older PowerPC Macs, I believe, are restricted to Firewire external boot devices only.

My guess is that the Air and X300 had to choose between Firewire and USB to meet space requirements, and Apple, for one, will not sell a computer that will not sync with an iPod – so it had to be USB.

By: Steve Klein

Steve Klein — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 19:19:02 +0000

I find the statements made about FireWire highly inaccurate. FireWire devices manage traffic themselves, and can talk directly to each other, while USB requires all data to pass through the computer, with the computer acting as a traffic cop. This makes transfers slower, and slows down the computer itself.

Testing shows that reading files from a hard drive is 33% to 70% faster on FireWire than USB 2.0. See here for details: http://www.usb-ware.com/firewire-vs-usb.htm

Also, don’t forget that it’s the standard used on virtually all digital video cameras. If you want to import video from your video camera, you’d better have a FireWire port on your computer.

By: Bill Cole

Bill Cole — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 04:33:28 +0000

I am a rather simple man; so my following suggestion must be weighed carefully before proceeding.
Before Tiger users (or Panther users, for that matter) install Leopard, I would recommend making a complete, bootable backup of one’s drive to an external FireWire hard drive. Use Leopard for a few days, and if the OS satisfies your needs, go for it. On the other hand, if Leopard displeases or distresses you, boot for that external drive with your previous (Tiger or whatever) operating system [and data to that earlier date] and simply reverse the backup. You will have lost a few days of data, which you could have preserved on a CD or DVD, but you will have that previous OS back where you want it with very little trouble.
As I said, I am a very simple man.

By: Bill Cole

Bill Cole — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 04:07:39 +0000

USB is probably quite good for simple backups of data, but to the best of my knowledge, Macintosh users cannot boot from an external drive using USB. Macintosh users must use FireWire ports to boot from an external drive. Perhaps eSATA ports will work as well for rebooting. [Of course, the external boot drive must contain the operating system.]