Clone Your Hard Drive before major upgrades!!!!!!

Question

http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=1517158#1517158
Someday, whether your it's because your hard drive fails or because you get upgraditis, you'll be glad you did......

Answer 1

With past versions of iLife, you could just rename the app like any other file, by clicking once on the icon, and then once more on the name itself. For example, rename "iMovieHD" to "iMovieHD_5", and then the new iLife installer wouldn't remove it since the name had changed. Might be a good idea to move it to another folder while you install, and move back afterwards.
But there are a few warnings about this method too. The integration of the iLife applications (for example using iTunes in iMovie and iDVD) could easily get messed up, and the update will often update things like your iPhoto albums and iTunes xml files, etc. New iLife apps often share the same preference file as the "old" iLife namesake, so startups can be flaky as you go back and forth between old and new ilife apps. See Old Toads warning about iPhoto libraries:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=314272&tstart=0
- these will be changed, and just using the "old" iDVD probably won't help.
In other words, just keeping the old iLife apps around is not a fail-safe insurance policy, and expect some flakyness at best.
Cloning your system and old applications to another drive is a much better option...and someday, you'll be glad you did.
John