Thank you Bruce and Glenn for your excellent information. Great
advice as usual. And re the ten point four point eleven... good grief
I'll be laughing at myself about that for ages—but then who came up
with that idea anyway? Don't they know about the dewey decimal
system? No wonder I can't keep all those wild feline names straight!
There was a time when I thought I knew my Macs pretty well... but
then that was around OS9. I better get over it.
On May 31, 2010, at 12:57 PM, Bruce Johnson wrote:
On May 31, 2010, at 12:09 PM, Kathy K wrote:
I'm trying to do my homework before making a purchase, and I'm
just ending up befuddled, and wondering if some kind folks on this
list can clear things up for me.
I am running 10.4.11
2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
2 GB Memory
Hard Drive Capacity: 232.57 GB, Available: 116.82 GB
I use this computer for graphic design/illustration, family
photos, and internet-based games (social facebook kind of games).
I would like to get an external drive to back up all my graphics
work and photos. I've been looking at the Seagate FreeAgent drives
(1TB-2TB) but I'm seeing in the specs that 10.4.8 is the minimum
OS needed. Is this just for the purpose of using TimeMachine? Or
do I need 10.4.8 just to dump files on the drive?
This is probably for the purposes of the generally useless software
on the Seagate drive.
Also you have a version greater than the one required, you have ten
point four point eleven, not ten point four point one one.
Also, it seems any external drive will work with a Mac, it's just
a matter of reformatting if it's a PC drive—correct?
If you want to use Time Machine, it has to be formatted HFS+, which
Disk Utility does with no fuss whatsoever, and Time Machine will do
automagically for you. Otherwise as just a drive to store stuff,
most drives are formatted FAT32 (or DOS as Disk Utility calls it)
and work out of the box. I've got a Freeagent Pro at home as my
Time Machine volume, and a seagate drive in a noname box as a
Carbon Copy CLoner backup (belt and suspenders type) and a Seagate
Freeagent drive on my system at work. (An Intel Core Duo iMac)
I would like to upgrade to 10.5 Leopard and perhaps later 10.6
Snow Leopard. Couldn't I get one of these drives now, manually
back up files to it by drag/drop, then upgrade to 10.5 and begin
using TimeMachine then?
Yes, although I'd use Carbon Copy Cloner to back it up.
Because a lot of my stuff is not backed up anywhere, I do want to
back everything up before doing an OS upgrade.
Don't waste the money on 10.5, just go to 10.6; your iMac will run
better.
Along with the OS upgrade, I'd also like to add 2 GB Memory, as
this computer can be pretty sluggish. I currently have 1 GB in
each of the two banks—so that means buying 2 new 2 GBs to replace
the 2 1 GB.
Yes, which is why 1Gb SO-DIMMS are cheap as dirt everywhere :-/
I don't have loads of $ to spend, and also need to know that my
graphics software is going to be compatible with the OS upgrade.
(Adobe CS3, and InDesign CS2, Quark 7, Freehand MXa—yes, the suite
needs upgrading and yes I'm still attached to Freehand.)
I know for a fact that the Adobe apps will work in 10.6, And I'm
pretty sure that Freehand will...I've got a disk with an old copy
around here. Quark I don't know about.
--
Bruce Johnson
"Wherever you go, there you are" B. Banzai, PhD
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