Upgrade to Mountain Lion-- How is the best way to speed up a not-so-old Mac?

[AshScache]

I'm really excited about the Mountain Lion launch expected next week! This will be my first OsX upgrade, however, and I have a procedural question. I did (and plan to renew) a Time Machine backup to an external harddrive before next week's upgrade. I've been generally disappointed with some of the performance of my Early-2011 MacBook Pro for the last several months and am hoping that a "fresh install" of Mountain Lion plus restoring my documents to the harddrive will fix the problem. Am I apply a Windows solution to a Mac problem, or am I thinking of this correctly?

Ash

 

[tyrell456]

If you want it to be a truly "fresh" install, don't simply install ML and then restore the Time Machine backup. This will pull any and all settings, glitches, permissions problems, etc. that are what's causing any hiccups. You'll want to do a fresh install of ML, and then manually move over your files from the backup.

So you'll want to open the backup drive, and then manually move the contents of the "Music" folder on it to the "Music" folder on your new ML install, etc. You'll also have to manually reinstall any applications.

 

[AshScache]

Thats no big deal-- I'm used to it from years of Windows. How do I find those files in the Time Machine backup?

 

[Edie Brickell]

simply use a cleanup utility that will clean your Mac and then install Mountain Lion.

 

[Frosties]

The first and easiest speedup for you is to exchange your hard drive for a SSD. A new install of the OS will have no lasting effect. You can add ram also from your 4GB to 8 or more if you use multitask with several programs or files open or have large files to work on.