Installing Snow Leopard: What You Need to Know

With Snow Leopard, Apple has streamlined and simplified the process of installing Mac OS X. While older versions of OS X made you decide what kind of installation you wanted to perform before you even specified what to install, Snow Leopard's installer gives you a single installation path. It's considerably easier.

By Dan Frakes
Fri, August 28, 2009

Macworld — With Snow Leopard, Apple has streamlined and simplified the process of installing Mac OS X. While older versions of OS X made you decide what kind of installation you wanted to perform before you even specified what to install, Snow Leopard's installer gives you a single installation path. It's considerably easier.

Gone, for example, is the old Clean Install option--which moved your existing OS and system add-ons to a Previous Systems folder and installed a fresh copy of the OS, requiring a good amount of tweaking and transferring of files afterward. Instead, Snow Leopard provides a more intelligent installation process that makes such tweaking largely unnecessary. The Erase and Install option is now gone, too (at least as a discrete Installer alternative; see "Simple steps, easy decisions," below).

What you need

According to Apple, your Mac must meet the following minimum requirements to install Snow Leopard:

Intel processor
DVD drive (or Leopard's Remote Disc feature)
1GB RAM
A built-in display or a display connected to your Mac's stock video card
5GB free hard-drive space (7GB if you plan to install the Snow Leopard developer tools)

While these are the official requirements, I recommend 2GB RAM and at least 10GB of free hard-drive space for a much better experience (both during installation and afterward). Before you begin installing, it's also worth checking to see if your Mac requires any firmware updates; Apple offers a support article with more details. Similarly, if you've installed an aftermarket video card in your Mac, be sure to check with the card's vendor to see if there are new Snow Leopard-compatible drivers you need to download and install.

Let me also suggest that a major OS upgrade is the perfect chance to check your drives for problems, clean house, and check for updates for your frequently used software. (Don't forget to check for new versions of preference panes and other add-ons that run in the background.) Finally, as with any major software update or upgrade, you should be sure to back up before installing Snow Leopard.

Simple steps, easy decisions

When you insert the Snow Leopard DVD in your Mac and double-click the Install Mac OS X icon, you aren't immediately prompted to restart as you have been with previous installers. Instead, you get to choose your install options immediately: just click Continue, accept the license agreement, and you're taken to the options screen.

(The exception to the steps just mentioned is if you want to check, repair, or erase your hard drive, or use other utilities, while booted from the Install DVD. If so, click the Utilities button and follow the instructions to boot off of the Install DVD. For example, to erase the hard drive before installing, choose Utilities -> Disk Utility from the first Installer screen after rebooting, and then manually erase the drive; you can then exit Disk Utility and proceed with installation. For more on why you might want to choose this route, see "Why Erase and Install?" below.)

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