when el capitan releases to the public , are you going to do a fresh install or upgrade from Yosemite ?
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Are going to do a fresh install?
- Thread starter Che Castro
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
I always update. Can't be bothered to reinstall everything. Plus there's minimal benefits to doing a clean install, unless your update goes wrong.
The benefit I see is if you actually partition your drive (or use an external drive for that matter) is that you keep your older OS up and running. If you have the space, you can use CCC to clone the Yosemite partition.
My point is not overwriting the old OS, and keeping it.
My point is not overwriting the old OS, and keeping it.
I plan on doing a fresh install because after I bought my Late '13 iMac, I migrated from my '06 iMac running snow leopard and i had done a fairly large amount of editing of system files and settings on the old system. My new iMac has always felt slower than it should, not horrible but not up to par with what i expected from a $2000 computer. With what I've seen from El Capitan, the fresh install combined with the overall performance increase should make my system feel better than new! 
Clean install if you're updating from something that's already been updated from previous OS. I'd suggest never keep something more than twice updated (two OS X major versions). You're just going to carry over all the cruft from all of these years messing around with various apps, logging from removed apps and so on.
I first played with El Cap on the rMBP that was updated all the way since Mavs back in 12 and it was decent. I did a clean install and it is definitely much faster without having all the crap I had from the last 2-3 years. This doesn't mean El Cap is faster because of clean install, it just means the system is running with less crap.
I first played with El Cap on the rMBP that was updated all the way since Mavs back in 12 and it was decent. I did a clean install and it is definitely much faster without having all the crap I had from the last 2-3 years. This doesn't mean El Cap is faster because of clean install, it just means the system is running with less crap.
Absolutely, for this release. If it wasn't a performance improvement release, I might not but I really want to take full advantage of the new speed. FWIW, I did an over the top install of 10.11 DP1 on my MBP running 10.10.4 B3 and it wasn't running to its full potential. I wiped the drive and restored via a TM backup from Yosemite and it works wonderfully. Very fast and fluid, and I hope that one Kernel Panic was a fluke with the pervious install.
I'm leaving my laptop on the Dev Beta circuit and my Mac Pro is going to go on the Public Beta circuit. That way, I can test both similar to how I tested Yosemite last year.
I'm leaving my laptop on the Dev Beta circuit and my Mac Pro is going to go on the Public Beta circuit. That way, I can test both similar to how I tested Yosemite last year.
I will just for the sake of it. I know it makes no difference because modern installers remove or segregate the old stuff.
Not done a clean install since I bought the laptop (running Mavericks) but then to some people I'm crazy anyway as I took my only laptop and put a non-official version of 10.11 DB1 on it (the subsequent betas have come from the app store as normal; I'm not a registered developer but was too impatient to wait for the public beta).
I've had less issues than some, and none (as far as I'm aware) that aren't just generic beta ones. In other words, I've had no extra issues by upgrading each time rather than doing a clean install. In fact, it's been easier as sometimes they move options/settings around and people have to hunt for them whereas mine are just carried over during the upgrade.
I've had less issues than some, and none (as far as I'm aware) that aren't just generic beta ones. In other words, I've had no extra issues by upgrading each time rather than doing a clean install. In fact, it's been easier as sometimes they move options/settings around and people have to hunt for them whereas mine are just carried over during the upgrade.
I always do in-place updates. Over and over, year after year. Both of our Mac minis (Late 2012) (i5 and i7) have been updated continuously from Mountain Lion. My i7 mini has had betas installed on it for Yosemite and El Capitan along the way too.
I don't have time to waste hours wiping and restoring computers which work just fine, thank you.
I don't have time to waste hours wiping and restoring computers which work just fine, thank you.
Maybe I am naïve, but I have been trusting the majority of what is on my MacBook to iCloud. Music, photos, all my documents. I always clean install and then just have to install some apps. A clean install is a fairly easy straightforward process for me. I hear of all the issues people have over the years and I don't see it, but I understand everyone's situation is different. I've just been surprisingly happy with Apple's cloud offerings as of late. Guess I am one of the lucky ones.
I will be doing a clean reinstall, I was about to do one of Yosemite this week but decided it was better to wait. I don't always do one, but my machine feels like it needs one.
Time Machine works.
There is no tangible benefit to a clean install, it is almost entirely psychological (i.e. the feeling of having a clean slate and no redundant user data on your disk). The installer makes sure that old system components are updated and unnecessary components are removed. El Capitan will actually clean up your /System, /bin, /sbin and /usr folders by moving everything that is not part of the system image out of these locations. Upgrading should thus be a bit of a clean install. Old logs and caches are cleaned up automatically anyway and old preferences and application support files can be easily cleaned up as well (even though the effort is hardly worth it).
The only reason why I would recommend a clean install is if you installed software in one of these locations mentioned above, as El Capitan will break them without a timely update. A clean install could be a way of getting rid of broken applications so that you can start fresh. However, if anything was added to the locations above, El Capitan will get rid of them for you and place them in your home folder.
In sum, unless you have specific issues that a clean install can resolve or don’t like redundant files in your library and user library, a clean install is not worth the effort. You won’t see performance benefits either.
Have you actually any proof that this is the case? Seems to be a widely held belief.
Last edited: