Is It Completely Safe To Upgrade To Snow Leopard, Yet?

[Luis Ortiz]

My system is a bit antiquated but runs smooth. I have an 8 core, 8 gig ram MacPro running OS 10.5.8, FCP 6, CS3 and a Matrox MXO box connected to an Apple Cinema HD display monitor.

I want to upgrade my system with SL, FCP 7 and CS4, but I'm not sure if all the bugs to these new upgrades have been resolved.

What kind of issues are still being encountered with the following, running on SL?

- AE-CS4,
- FCP7,
- Color 1.5,
- QT 7.6.4 (after QTX kicks it to the utility folder)
- MXO1

Any advice will be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

[Brandon Kraemer]

Running FCP7 with Kona 3, CS3, Shake 4.1, all Red apps. 2 weeks in... no problems to report.

if you do the upgrade...

DO A CLEAN INSTALL &
CLONE YOUR 10.5 BOOT DRIVE BEFORE YOU INSTALL

-bk

[Noah Kadner]

Yeah if you have the capacity to clone your system as it is now for an easy retrieval- then go for it. I'm using FCS 3 with older Leopard- no problems.

Noah

[Chris Mierzwinski]

running fcp 7, cs4, etc.. sl and everything ran smoothly without clean install from 10.5.6 or.7.

the only thing i had an issue is with seti. Are we alone?

[Luis Ortiz]

Running FCP7 with Kona 3, CS3, Shake 4.1, all Red apps. 2 weeks in... no problems to report.

if you do the upgrade...

DO A CLEAN INSTALL &
CLONE YOUR 10.5 BOOT DRIVE BEFORE YOU INSTALL

-bk

Clean install would mean uninstalling all my software (which means deactivating my licenses) and reinstalling after SL is in my system, correct? That would mean lots of install time for me. --Dangit!

What do you use to clone your boot drive? I was looking at "Carbon Copy Cloner" http://bombich.com/ as an option. Maybe it's wiser to take it an Apple authorized center and have them do it for me. I really don't have the time either.

Thanks for your response.

[Luis Ortiz]

Yeah if you have the capacity to clone your system as it is now for an easy retrieval- then go for it. I'm using FCS 3 with older Leopard- no problems.

Noah

Thanks for your response. Just got your book.

[Jeff Kilgroe]

I have one issue with Snow Leopard and that's with the ATTO H680 card. When I connect an eSATA device, or even if I boot with one connected, the system kernel panics within 10 seconds of booting up to about a minute after I boot or from when the device is connected.

I've tried everything.. I can duplicate it with several eSATA drives from different manufacturers. I can duplicate it on two separate systems with two separate H680 cards. If I boot these systems into OSX 10.5, all works fine. ATTO claims they have full 10.6 compatibility, but their latest driver dates back to June. I have not yet received a response from their support people about this, which is also very odd.

My favorite way to update OSX is to first make sure everything is backed up. Then I deactivate all my software authorizations like iTunes, Photoshop, etc.. I pull the system drive or move it to a different slot, but I keep it handy in case I need to boot from it again. I install a new or empty HDD in its place and do a fresh install.

Same thing can also be done by cloning your drive to an image or external disk and then doing the fresh install. After installation, I don't like to let OSX automatically transfer all my stuff other than mail accounts and documents. I much rather go and pick through everything myself since I tend to collect lots of crap I don't need to keep.

Other than the above eSATA issue, which isn't a real problem for me, just a minor annoyance that I'm sure will be sorted soon; everything else works great. The 2.2 default gamma is pretty much worth the upgrade. Some applications give errors on installation about inability to access / use / install PACE libraries. But Apple and others say these errors are benign and I haven't noticed any issues. FCS3, CS4, RED tools, Modo, Maya, etc.. all run just fine. I haven't installed Shake on a SL system yet, but I've pretty well retired it I think.

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Luis, Carbon Copy Cloner is ideal. If you're cloning your boot volume, you should first boot your system from an external HDD or some other bootable volume. That way CCC can have secured access to your primary drive (since it won't be considered the primary boot volume) and can do a block-level copy. Which is more reliable and a bit faster.

You don't need to uninstall anything. Most all software activations or authorizations can be removed in a matter of seconds. But you are right that it does take time to reinstall all your software onto the newly setup system.

I don't recommend doing the upgrade of SL. I did that on my 2008 Mac Pro and after the install, it refused to boot. Ended up having to wipe the drive and do the fresh install anyway. The fresh install makes for a much cleaner and more efficient system anyway. I was just trying to save some time. Either way, make sure you have a good backup before you do any of this.

[Luis Ortiz]

I have one issue with Snow Leopard and that's with the ATTO H680 card. When I connect an eSATA device, or even if I boot with one connected, the system kernel panics within 10 seconds of booting up to about a minute after I boot or from when the device is connected.

I've tried everything.. I can duplicate it with several eSATA drives from different manufacturers. I can duplicate it on two separate systems with two separate H680 cards. If I boot these systems into OSX 10.5, all works fine. ATTO claims they have full 10.6 compatibility, but their latest driver dates back to June. I have not yet received a response from their support people about this, which is also very odd.

My favorite way to update OSX is to first make sure everything is backed up. Then I deactivate all my software authorizations like iTunes, Photoshop, etc.. I pull the system drive or move it to a different slot, but I keep it handy in case I need to boot from it again. I install a new or empty HDD in its place and do a fresh install.

Same thing can also be done by cloning your drive to an image or external disk and then doing the fresh install. After installation, I don't like to let OSX automatically transfer all my stuff other than mail accounts and documents. I much rather go and pick through everything myself since I tend to collect lots of crap I don't need to keep.

Other than the above eSATA issue, which isn't a real problem for me, just a minor annoyance that I'm sure will be sorted soon; everything else works great. The 2.2 default gamma is pretty much worth the upgrade. Some applications give errors on installation about inability to access / use / install PACE libraries. But Apple and others say these errors are benign and I haven't noticed any issues. FCS3, CS4, RED tools, Modo, Maya, etc.. all run just fine. I haven't installed Shake on a SL system yet, but I've pretty well retired it I think.

Lots of great information. Thank you so much.

[Brandon Kraemer]

Clean install would mean uninstalling all my software (which means deactivating my licenses) and reinstalling after SL is in my system, correct? That would mean lots of install time for me. --Dangit!

What do you use to clone your boot drive? I was looking at "Carbon Copy Cloner" http://bombich.com/ as an option. Maybe it's wiser to take it an Apple authorized center and have them do it for me. I really don't have the time either.

Thanks for your response.

Jeff covered this but...

I use CCCloner, to a FW 800 drive. Then reformat the drive, write all 0's to disk option. Then install Snow... then migrate user and settings, but not Apps. Run all updates. Then install FC Studio, run all updates, then install Adobe stuff, run all updates with Adobe Updater. Then install remaining apps.

Helps to take a snapshot/printout of our Apps folder and make a list of what you have to put back on. If you have downloaded disk images of your installers, put them on a FW drive, saves time when you have to reinstall.

Good luck.

bk