Best practice to optimise iMac life & longevity - before Lion upgrade

[konsoul]

Hi guys,

This may be a really obvious question to some of you (and I hope it it) but i'm not the greatest at keeping my machine running as well as I know it can.

I bought the 27" i7 iMac when it first arrived (oct 2009) and since then I have simply been using it and have neglected keeping it running as well as it can (besides software updates). I use it primarily for graphic design just so you know.

I ultimately want to upgrade to Lion as I'm currently running Snow Leopard 10.6.8 but want to know if there's any basic stuff I can do re Disk Permissions etc before I get my machine ready for an upgrade. I have been told about resetting your machine/clean installing your machine once a year to keep it at its optimum performance. So i'm a tad confused now.

Does anybody have any pointers on how to go about getting my machine ready for Lion or will a install of Lion overtop of SL be fine?

Thanks in advance!

 

[Feed Me]

I have a mid 2007 iMac that came preinstalled with Tiger. I upgraded it to Leopard straight away, and then to Snow Leopard when that came out. I also updated it straight to Lion within minutes of it being released.
Never once have I had to wipe the iMac, and I've never had any problems with it, nor have I ever felt the need to do a clean install.
My Mac has run all day, every day since I bought it - belive me, it gets a thrashing. I've never worried about its performance, because performance hasn't been a problem.

With macs you generally don't need to mess around with voodoo-like performance tweaking, etc, unless your mac actually has a problem.

I would say just go ahead and bang Lion on it. Back up as many files as you can beforehand (obviously), and see what happens (hint: everything will be fine).
If you're actually having problems with your mac, try a clean install, if not, don't bother, and don't worry.

 

[belvdr]

Agreed. If you use Time Machine, then simply back it up before installing. You can then restore the machine back to that state should something go wrong.

The only time I've ever had to muck around with things is when I tried to convert my Mac entirely to Windows 7 and/or Linux. I experienced some weird boot issues and slowdowns so I had to zero out the disk and reinstall from scratch.