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Is it Worth Clean Installing iMac?

T

thepominlaw

macrumors member
Original poster
Jan 29, 2010
61
1
My imac late 2009 base is starting to run a little slow, is full of folders from programmes installed and removed over the years and over the last month i have had a few issues also (scanner, printer and mouse driver issues). The system originally ran snow leopard, this was upgraded to lion and this to mountain lion.

Probably going to regret saying this now i only have 1 month of applecare left but the mac has been super reliable over the last 3 years. Its left on 24/7 with only the screen set to sleep and is only restarted when needed.

I use clean my mac and onyx for maintenance but I am thinking that a fresh installation of mountain Lion may help.

Would be interested to hear your opinion, I have a timemachine backup, carbon copy backup and files on bluray disk but i am still nervous making the jump.
 
T

Tanax

macrumors 65816
Jun 15, 2011
1,018
335
Stockholm, Sweden
What would increase performance and speed drastically would be installing an SSD. Then you would really see an increase in speed and your iMac would feel new again.
 
0dev

0dev

macrumors 68040
Dec 22, 2009
3,947
24
127.0.0.1
Despite what a lot of people say, Macs aren't magic and, like all computer systems, they do benefit from a clearing out now and then.

That said, if you restore from Time Machine you will likely put all the junk back on anyway. You want to manually back up all your important files and manually restore them afterwards. That way the system and settings are fresh and you aren't restoring things you don't need. Then you will notice a real difference.
 
T

thepominlaw

macrumors member
Original poster
Jan 29, 2010
61
1
Tanax said:
What would increase performance and speed drastically would be installing an SSD. Then you would really see an increase in speed and your iMac would feel new again.
Click to expand...

Would like to install a SSD inplace of the optical drive but cannot find anywhere to do the install for me in the uk thats local.
 
justperry

justperry

macrumors G5
Aug 10, 2007
12,557
9,750
I'm a rolling stone.
I say, wait a bit until 10.8.3, it might get better.

I am on MR most of the day for ages and it seems older hardware doesn't run ML smoothly, heck even people with new Mac's are complaining about ML slugginess.
 
justperry

justperry

macrumors G5
Aug 10, 2007
12,557
9,750
I'm a rolling stone.
Jedi said:
A new System Folder does wonders !!

Gary 
Click to expand...

Depends, most of the time not so much, there's not much in the System folder which gets updated on a regular bases, Caches do and a few more files, the rest is static until the next update.
And, since when can you update the System Folder by itself, there are a few more folders on the root level which also will be updated if you do so.

Cleaning on a mac doesn't make much difference overall, but there are sometimes problems and a few of them are corrupt .plist files, caches and startup deamons and startup agents, that's where you have to look.
 
A

AppleFan360

macrumors 68020
Jan 26, 2008
2,213
719
I got my first iMac in 2007 and am on my 4th one now. Never have done a clean install. Did a simple Time Machine transfer from one machine to the next.

I have had no issues. When I transfer from one machine to the next, I noticed improvements only because each successive iMac was faster than the previous.

When you do a time machine restore, you are simply transferring data and settings. The basic OS on the new machine is already "clean".

I guess it couldn't hurt to start fresh but in my experience, I never really needed it.

What you can do is simply wipe your iMac. Re-install the OS and then put your data back on using Time Machine. That will probably be sufficient.
 
R

robgendreau

macrumors 68040
Jul 13, 2008
3,465
329
No.

Clean installs are usually a waste of time. Just because there are a bunch of deprecated files laying around doesn't mean they are slowing much of anything down. You are far better off diagnosing your problem and fixing it.

Clean installing is like replacing your engine because your car is running a bit ragged. It might work, but a far less drastic solution, like new plugs, might have worked just as well.
 
2012Tony2012

2012Tony2012

macrumors 6502a
Dec 2, 2012
741
3
Is it possible to backup the home folder and then reinstall and then copy across home folder?
 
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