Things-To-Do Before Upgrading Your MAC To New OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion

Apple is going to release its next Mountain Lion OS which is said to be available by early this week as speculated by many. This means, all the Mac holders have to wait a bit more before getting their hands on the new OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion. However, in meantime, its encouragingly recommended to first check whether your device is able to be upgraded to new OS without any harm or not and to help you in that, we bring a few things-to-do that you should adhere to, before upgrading your MACto the new OS.

Does Your MAC Meet The Requirements Of New OS??
In the first place, you should check the requirements of the new OS and compare them with your owned device. As the new OS upgrade would contain some advancement that have the probability of leaving out few of the Mac hardwares. In this case, the requirements primarily revolve around graphics capabilities and support for the system’s 64-bit kernel. As there’s an official list of hardwares that apple supports, you can compare your model with that list to see if your device is eligible for upgrade or not. However, if you own following models then you would not be able to avail this mountain lion OS X upgrade.

• iMac6,1 or earlier (polycarbonate cases)
• MacBook4,2 or earlier
• MacBookPro2,2 or earlier
• MacBookAir1,1 or earlier
• MacMini2,1 or earlier
• MacPro2,1 or earlier
• XServe2,1 or earlier

Now to look up for your model no. follow these steps;

• Go to the Apple menu and choose About this Mac
• Click the More Information button (If you are already running Lion, then the system should show you the model’s time frame that you can compare to Apple’s official list)

However, if you are not running Lion already, then;

• Click System Report (you will see the system information tool open)
• In the Hardware section of the tool, check the Model Identifier and compare it to the list given above

Secondly, to avail this up-gradation you will have to access Mac App store which requires at least OS X 10.6 to be installed and upgraded to its latest version. If you currently have OS X 10.5 on your system, then you will need to purchase & install Snow Leopard before the up-gradation takes place. Moreover Apple also has an Up-To-Date Program for those who have purchased new Mac hardware. They can get help from there.
Lastly, the final hardware requirement you should check for is RAM. Mountain Lion OS X 10.8 requires at minimum 2GB of RAM but the more RAM you would have in your system the more better it would be. Preferably you should have 8GB or more RAM so things could workout smoothly under the new OS.
Does Your System Ensure Routine Backup?
Once you are done checking your hardware requirements, next check is for backing up ways of your system. If you do not have back up system enables in your system then get an extra hard drive and enable Apple’s Time Machine backup routine to keep restorable backup of your system on routine basis. Moreover, you can also opt for system cloning tools for keeping backup of your boot volume i.e. SupreDuper & Carbon Copy Cloner.


Does Your System Contain Any Resolvable Issues?
If yes then you have to get rid of them before getting your hands on the new OS. Before upgrading to Mountain Lion OS X 10.8 try to clear up as much of the issues like slowdowns, application freezes and crashes, or other unwanted behaviors and for that, you should run general maintenance routine on your system. Moreover, you should also go to software updates and install any update for your version of OS X as well as do update your third part softwares as they will be releasing Mountain Lion specific updates in meantime. Lastly if you could not get rid of these problems despite trying everything then go for the upgrade and if any problem occurs during that, you can restore back your system due to the backup system.
How To Create Mountain Lion Installation Drive?
To create the Mountain Lion installation drive optionally, follow these steps;

• Purchase and download Mountain Lion from the Mac App Store.
• Quit the installer when it automatically launches.
• Locate the installer in your Applications folder.
• Right-click the installer and choose “Show Package Contents.”
• Go to the Contents > Shared Support folder (In the Shared Support folder you will see a disk image called “InstallESD.dmg,” which contains all the files to boot to the OS X installer and upgrade your system)
• Use Disk Utility to restore this image to an external drive (However, in doing so you may run into a couple of differences. First, you will likely need a drive that is larger than most standard 4GB USB drives, and second, you might get an error when restoring the disk image file directly to the external drive. If you get an error, then first mount the image by double-clicking it, and then drag the mounted “Mac OS X Install ESD” volume to the “Source” field when restoring it to the destination drive of choice)

Having answered all the above-mentioned question by your system, now your MAC is prepared for the upgrade to new Mountain OS X 10.8. As a suggestion, instead of upgrading the system on first day of release, you should wait to see if any problem arises on the devices of those who have downloaded it already. However, Apple undertakes rigorous testing of OS but still this suggestion could save you from many hidden and unforeseen anomalies.
Source:
Cnet.com