Re-Installing Leopard, will i lose everything?

gerry87

Hey, my ibook g4 wouldn't turn on last night, it kept getting stuck on the grey screen. I rang a repair place and they said it probably needed a re-install which they'd do for €120 :eek:

Newho, i figured i'd do it myself for 120 euro cheaper, so i turned it on put the leopard cd in and held down alt and started going through the steps.

What i'm wondering is this, my HD has 5.3 GB's free out of 37.1 GB. If i select the Archive and Install option (http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1710) will it keep all my documents and things or just settings?

I have like 90% of my stuff backed up, so its not a huge deal, but if it will wipe everything, can I say boot from my external HD and save my couple of files before re-installing?

Thanks.

440Hz

I would clone your drive to an external HD before reinstalling Leopard, use Carbon Copy Cloner or something like that, or use the system's own Disk Utility to make a disc image of the drive, you can do that during the Archive and Install process as well, but if it were me I would back it up before starting anything else. I say back it up to an ext hd as I dont think you will have enough room on your machine to archive and install locally by the sounds of it.

gerry87

440Hz wrote: »

I would clone your drive to an external HD before reinstalling Leopard, use Carbon Copy Cloner or something like that, or use the system's own Disk Utility to make a disc image of the drive, you can do that during the Archive and Install process as well, but if it were me I would back it up before starting anything else. I say back it up to an ext hd as I dont think you will have enough room on your machine to archive and install locally by the sounds of it.

Ok, so clone my HD onto the external HD, then erase everything and then do I take what i want off the external one or just kind of clone it back on to the laptop?

Oh and how do i do it since i can't turn the laptop on to install the program?

440Hz

Use the Disc Utility. Have a read of this.

With the external HD connect, boot from the OS X Install DVD and run disk utility from there (Insert the Install DVD and shutdown the computer then power it on while holding down the C key). When its booted from the DVD choose the appropriate language then from the menu choose Utilties > Disk Utility.

The choose your computer HD (highlight it) and choose the option to create a disc image from it, and choose the ext hd as the location to save this image.

Once everything is backed up you can archive and install. This may work or you may run out of space. If it works then great, if you run out of space, that is ok too as everything is backed up but it means that you might have to erase and reinstall.

gerry87

Thanks

Did what you said with the external HD then did an erase and install, It's in the middle of opening the disk image, so i'll see if it worked then.

And on the plus side, i've got rid of all the crap i had!