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theNEOone

macrumors 6502
Original poster
I've been getting slowness, beachballs, and overheating/loud fans over the last few weeks. It feels like it's getting worse by the day. I want to reinstall and get a fresh start. (Btw, I was on Leopard and upgraded to SL...I'm hoping a fresh SL will clear up most of my problems.)

Do I:

1. Restore from a time machine backup
2. Migration assistant
3. Clean re-install and just copy-paste my files

???


I'm not necessarily looking for the quickest solution. I'm looking for the solution that gives me the cleanest start. Re-installing everything will be a pain, but I'll do it if it means better performance.

What I don't want to happen is that I lose library information from iTunes (playlists, ratings, playcounts, etc.) or face/place tagging within iPhoto. Everything else is pretty disposable. (Contacts/calendars are all synced up to Gmail, all my other docs are pretty straight forward.) I can install and/or re-download all my other applications.

Can someone provide a good comparison between the "behind the scenes" processes that occur when I perform a migration? What's actually getting moved? I don't want to copy over files but at the same time copy over non-essential junk that's just a byproduct of months of use.

What's this "All other files and folders nonsense"?

screenshot20100209at915.png



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Migration Assistant. Not really any different than moving stuff over yourself from the machine's point of view but much easier.
 
Migration Assistant. Not really any different than moving stuff over yourself from the machine's point of view but much easier.

Cool, thanks. That's what I was hoping, but how do I find out what's in the "Other files and folders" from my screenshot above??


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