Precautions for safely upgrading your OS??

Question

Hey there, so I suppose that this question could probably be posted on any of the other OS threads, but since it relates to Tiger I figured I'd try here.
Anyway, I still currently have the last version of Panther running on my Dual 1.25 GHz G4 (yes, old computer, old OS, I'm probably going to try to get an iMac or Powerbook within the year, but for now...), and recently got a copy of Tiger that I was going to upgrade to for the time being.
However, as the drive partition that I'd be installing it to would, ideally, be the SAME one that I currently have Panther on, and I have a LOT of valuable files on there, I just want to make sure that I do so properly, so that none of the personal files I have on there get erased (and I don't need to reinstall all my software).
Fortunately, I DO have an external drive I can back things up to, but there's also a fair amount of software/applications on the current drive that I want to keep, and I just want to be sure that I HAVE to back anything/everything up, or that I'm going to NEED to reinstall all of that software. Obviously, it's been awhile since I've installed a new OS, and when I did so before, I don't think there was much of value on the old drive that I was installing to....
Can someone please advise me? Would it be possible simply to install Tiger to the other partition, and designate that as the boot drive? (and what software/applications could I/would I need to erase on the current boot drive to avoid them interfering with one another??
Granted, this may be a lot safer and less complicated than I'm making it out to be, I just don't want to accidentally erase anything. Thanks!!

Answer 1

I suspect that any regular software you used in Panther will also work in Tiger. It is not like you are going from OS9 to Tiger, or going from Tiger back to Panther with a lot of Tiger software. As I said before, the only things for which I would not use Panther versions are any disk utility or maintenance software. I use Office 2004 with Tiger fine.
Your most important thing to do regardless of whatever upgrades you are doing, is to ensure you have a backup for all your important files and applications. This if for when (not if, but when) your drive has problems. I have two internal drives and a partitioned external. Everything on internal drive #1 goes onto external partition #1, and everything on internal drive #2 goes onto external partition #2. Simple. If I upgrade OS I make sure my backup is up to date and bootable. I then put in the DVD and do the update. If there are any problems I can always revert from my backup. What is making this a bit complicated for me is figuring out what files you have where. If you have unique files distributed on all three partitions it will make it very difficult to use any to make a bootable backup. I guess I'm not following if you have any totally available partions or drives at the moment, and maybe you need to consolidate files. What we're all saying is you should always have a complete duplicate of your main partition/drive.
Really, I'm just looking for the simplest, safest method of upgrading to Tiger. In the past, I installed a new OS to a blank drive, or partition. Now, I have two partitions, and the one with my OS has a lot of valuable personal stuff in my Users folder, and some software (like Office X, Final Draft, Toast 7, and so on) that I'm worried might all have to be installed, or not work with Tiger altogether.
Alternative: If the second partition is pretty much available, clone your current Panther partition to the second partition, then do an update install of tiger on that second partition. Run your computer off the Tiger partition for a few days until you're happy, then remove the stuff from the first partiton.
Admittedly, my external drive--which is Firewire--is formatted with/for OS9 (the OS9 software is actually on the drive, there are even some old OS9 apps I've run off the drive), so my MAIN concern is that I don't back everything up to it, then discover that the internal drive--and all the files I'd backed up to it--won't be recognized on Tiger... that would really suck.
Consolidate your files onto your other partition if you have room, and free up your FW for backup purposes. Tiger and OS9 can use the same HFS+ disk formatting so it isn't that your drive is "formatted" to OS9 (unless you formatted it to HFS which is really, really dated) and OS9 stuff has to be on the FW drive. I have OS9 apps on my Tiger volume. The only small issue may be if you actually boot to OS9 on occasion, but you haven't mentioned that.
So if you have any suggestions, I'd really appreciate it. I did download that CCC, and don't have a problem using it to copy/backup my current boot drive (I believe there's enough room on my 2nd partition and my external drive to copy a disk image of my existing boot drive/User files over to), but since I don't generally have much experience using Disk imaging software, I'm a bit scared about the possibility of making a mistake.
CCC doesn't use disk images, but if you want to copy a bootable version (we all recommend this version) of your current drive the clone utilities will erase everything on the destination volume which is why you need to have one that can have this done to it. I haven't used SuperDuper so I can't give you specifics on how to use that (SuperDuper is shareware, CCC is free/donation).
I mean, it's SOUNDING like upgrading from Panther to Tiger is a lot more complicated than I'd realized, is that right? Because that does worry me...
Something that would help me at least is to know how big your partitions are in terms of total space, and how much space is occupied on each partition, and also how much of that is unique. The process is actually pretty simple but since your want to do it safely you really need to make a complete backup.