Hesitant Installation on Mac - My Passport Studio 500Gb

WD External Drives External Drives for Mac
1

I have just unboxed my ‘My Passport Studio 500Gb’ device. I am a little hesitant in proceeding with the installation because this weekend after initial installation I will be changing my operating system and the way I use the device. I just don’t want to configure it one way, and then find I can’t reconfigure it another way after after to OS upgrade. This is my plan.

  1. I run the last model eMac, currently with Mac OS X Tiger 10.4.11.

  2. I have Mac OS X Leopard 10.5.6 ready to install as soon as possible.

  3. But, firstly I’ll install and configure the Passport HD to run under Tiger, and therefore not configured for Time Machine.

  4. Then I’ll copy all my important files to the Passport HD in preparation for the Mac OS upgrade.

  5. Next, I’ll disconnect the the Passport HD.

  6. The Mac OS upgrade will be next, Tiger 10.4.11 —> Leopard 10.5.6.

  7. Then bring Leopard up to its last release, 10.5.8.

8. Then if all is well with the OS upgrade, connect the Passport HD and dump all the saved files.

  1. And here is the cause of my hesitation; I will now want to somehow reconfigure that Passport HD, now connected under Mac OS X Leopard 10.5.8, to run exclusively as a Time Machine backup device.

I’d be very pleased to get some feedback on this. Is there any difficulty in achieving point #9 above? Thanks in anticipation. 

2

Hello,

How did you copy the files from the Mac to the Passport? Did you drag and drop the files? If yes, I don’t see any major issues with the configuration you are trying to setup.

3

Thanks for the reply. I’ve done it all already.

On installation of the WD MPS device, I opted out of the WD SmartWare, so as to keep things simple.

I did drag and drop the files from eMac to Passport without problems, then tipped them all out again after the successful Mac Leopard OS upgrade.

The Apple ‘Time Machine’ was so simple to set up and works like a breeze.

From what I saw, the only thing that interested me in the WD SmartWare was the reported 10% lift in performance in the USB/Firewire connectivity. I decided to give that up in favour of the simplicity.

Thanks again.