Not sure if my searching isn't up to snuff, but can't tell if this has been asked already.

I have a Mini with only 5gb free on the 60gb HD, and have bought Leopard to upgrade from Tiger. There's an Administrator user and two normal users on the system currently.

I have SuperDuper'd the hard drive to an external FW drive, and am currently also doing an iBackup to a different partition on the external HD. Once my login has finished iBackup, I'll do it on my roomie's user area.

I want to do an Erase and Install in the hope that I'll gain a little bit of room back (omitting languages, some printer drivers etc), to tide me through to buying an iMac at the end of the summer.

When I do the Erase & Install, do I want the external FW drive attached or unattached to the Mini? I want to use Migration Assistant to transfer docs etc back onto the Mini's HD once up and running.

If it doesn't matter, do I just create the Administrator user to start with, under the same name and password as the Tiger version? Will Migration Assistant copy in the two normal users profiles etc from the SuperDuper backup?

Forgive the questions, but I'm too used to doing it at work on XP (format, load XP SP2, add administrator, do all 100+ updates , add user, re-add programs, off and running), and I'm not sure how it compares in OS X.

Actually, when creating a new (your first) user on the newly installed Leopard, it should NOT be the same name as any of the accounts on your Tiger install on the FW drive. This is because you will be migrating ALL the accounts over from the FW drive and you can't have two accounts by the same name.

You can have the FW drive connected when you do the erase / install of Leopard. If so, you'll be asked during the Leopard setup assistant if you wish to use Apple Migration Assistant to migrate over accounts / prefs/ applications / networking settings from the SuperDuper backup on the FW drive.

Or, you can leave the FW drive disconnected and just run Apple Migration Assistant from /Applicatoins/Utilities after you've setup your first admin account on the new Leopard install (and reconnecting the FW drive.)

Personally, I'd leave the FW drive disconnected when doing the erase / install of Leopard as it's the "safer" thing to do. That is, there is NO chance of anything happening to the data on the FW drive during the Leopard Install. Nothing would happen anyhow though I prefer being careful about such things all the same.

Keep in mind that a base Leopard install is something like 4-5 GB larger than a base Tiger install to begin with!

Dave

So I create a new Admin account to replace the Tiger one, or do I migrate the Tiger one in and have two Admin accounts?

Yes to the latter. Just create an admin account on the Leopard install by a different name than your admin account on the Tiger install. Then, you'll migrate all three accounts using Apple Migration Assistant from the Tiger install on the FW drive. Later, you'll login as your imported Admin user and can delete that first Admin account you created on Leopard by a different name if you wish.

The reason for doing this is, say if your Admin account on the Tiger install were Sam and you started with an admin account on Leopard called Sam as well. Migration Assistant would tell you that there is already a "Sam" account and change the name of your old admin account from Tiger to something like "Sam1" on Leopard.

Dave

Arse - best look at removing some stuff when I migrate back in then

Thanks for your help, Dave Hmm, 9.24pm, could be a long evening tonight