Clean Install or Upgrade

[AcesHigh87]

I plan to upgrade my iMac to Mountain Lion, I’ve known this since they announced it. Unfortunately my macbook is being left in the dust of “computers that can’t run it” but that’s beside the point. What I wonder is if I should clean install ML or just upgrade to it?

I ask because when I got my iMac I simply used my Time Machine backup to transfer over all my data from my macbook. This was great for setup simplicity but I think there might have been some not so good files in there as the speed jump I expected to get from the macbook (early 2008) to the iMac (2001) isn’t quite there. It’s faster for sure but still feels like it’s not running optimally.

From what I’ve read a clean install is definitely a good way to get the most out of a new OS but my question is: is it worth it? Considering I’d need to individually add all my applications, settings, files, etc back in which could take hours is the process really worth it? For that matter, once I transfer all those things over do I really gain anything from the effort since the same files are in place?

It’s possible, of course, that the lack of new speed is in my head. I’m just wondering, assuming it’s not, if a clean install and taking all the time to setup my mac is worth it.

 

[jji7skyline]

What I like to do, is have a separate partition for my OS and for my user files, this way I clean install every time without having to backup.

I'm pretty sure you wouldn't feel much speed boost at all between a 2008 mac and a 2001 mac

 

[AcesHigh87]

What I like to do, is have a separate partition for my OS and for my user files, this way I clean install every time without having to backup.

I'm pretty sure you wouldn't feel much speed boost at all between a 2008 mac and a 2001 mac

Poor typing, you obviously knew what I meant and it's in my sig haha.

Anyway, I just upgraded. Reading through other comments (I think I should have posted is in the ML section, it got more attention) most people were saying that there was little benefit to a clean install. I think it might have just been Lion that was making it iMac feel slow, feels really snappy with ML. Shutting Down / restarting is still much slower than I'd like but I think that might be based off how much I have going on startup.