Apple has released the Gold Master build of Mac OS X Lion, which indicates that Lion is going to be released any time soon. Because of that, we have to prepare for the big cat – the right way. We’ve put together this guide to make your upgrade smooth.

What you’ll need

• A Mac with the latest version of Snow Leopard (10.6.8)
• 8GB of free disk space
• App Fresh – A free application that keeps all of your software to the latest version
• Omni Disk Sweeper – A free application that shows large files on your hard drive
• OnyX – A free utility program, similar to CCleaner for Windows but with more options
• Backup your hard drive with Time Machine,  Carbon Copy Cloner, or any other piece of backup software you prefer

Here’s something that you might have done already, but if you’re not sure if you have the latest version, go to the Apple Menu > About This Mac. If you have anything lower than 10.6.8 (latest version), click Software Update.

OS X Lion will finally discontinue Rosetta support, so your Power PC application will no longer work. If you still use a Rosetta application, you should update to hopefully, an Intel version. If there’s no Intel version, you’re out of luck. To find out if you’re using a Power PC app, go to your Application Folder > Utilities > Activity Monitor.

Upgrading to Lion may cause incompatibility to some of your applications. Some apps are already pushing out updates that prepares it for Lion. To update all of your apps, it’s recommended to use App Fresh.

OS X Lion recommends at least 8GB of hard drive space, and possibly more for the recovery partition that Lion will put. If you already have 8GB or more free, it’s still a good idea to de-clutter your hard drive. By using Omni Disk Sweeper, you can see which folder or component in your hard drive is the biggest. You’ll be surprised how much clutter you might have on your hard drive.

There is an alternative to Omni Disk Sweeper called DaisyDisk. It has a hefty price tag of $19.99, but it gives you a graphical representation of your hard drive and it has much more features.

Another great utility application is called OnyX. OnyX is almost like CCleaner for Windows, but with powerful tools like checking the S.M.A.R.T status and maintenance utilities. There’s a lot more that goes with OnyX that you can check out.

Possibly the most important step to this guide is backing up all of your data.

Obviously with this step, you’ll need an external hard drive, which is relatively cheap. When picking out an external drive, you should always pick one with a bigger capacity than your current hard drive. There are two pieces of software that you should use for backup: Time Machine and Carbon Copy Cloner. I recommend Time Machine due to the simplicity and it’s built-in to OS X. If you’re tech-savvy, you can use Carbon Copy.