Hardware migration and upgrade from 6.3 to 8.0 advice

[Robert Huff]

Frank Wissmann writes:

>  > i am facing this situation, where i need to upgrade from my 6.3 i386
>  > system, used as my main workstation, to a new hardware based on amd64
>  > (phenom II x4).
>
>  > b) migrate all current data to the new hardware, kernel/system
>  > included, and then try to upgrade to 8.0 (by sysinstall or
>  > makeworld/makekernel)
>  
>  Item b) is not recommended.

	Confirmed.  _Highly_ not recommended. .0 releases usually
contain ABI/API changes (among other things) and you don't want
anything getting confused.

>  For me, a clean install of 8.0 and a move from the old data to
>  the fresh install is better.

	To the OP: the machine I'm typing on is also AMD Phenom II x4
(940, if it matters) originally installed with 8.0-RC3/amd64.
	Once I got past the "dangerously dedicated disk" issue (and
close relatives) everything went smoothly.
	Of the choices presented, I recommend (a1) with the old disk
set to read-only in hardware.  New disks are cheap, and this gives
you a perfect backup for as long as you want it.  


					Robert Huff