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Fresh Install of OS X
- Thread starter Caitlyn
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As a backup tool, I found Silverkeeper from Lacie.com quite useful. It's free and straightforward, just "cloning" your original files and structure onto another drive or PC.
As far as fresh installs go, I've done 2 now, even though I'm still a 6 month old mac-virgin. The 1st one I did because I wanted to install a separate swap-partition on my ibook, I didn't notice much difference in speed. The 2nd because I messed up some vital files (stupid me). When I re-applied the separate swap-trick though, I noticed that I had missed a vital step before (setting the delay, so that the partition actually gets used), I fixed that and found my system to be much speedier.
So to me the advantage of multi-partitioning were some speed-gains, but also, and more importantly to a fresh-installer, if you assign separate partitions to: your system (OSX) files; your applications; your user-files; and your swap. Then a fresh-install will simply overwrite the system-partition and leave the rest as it was. In other words, it's nearly painless, and you don't have to back up your files.
Anyway, if I've convinced you... check out this hint on MacOSXhints, and also read the user-comments.
As far as fresh installs go, I've done 2 now, even though I'm still a 6 month old mac-virgin. The 1st one I did because I wanted to install a separate swap-partition on my ibook, I didn't notice much difference in speed. The 2nd because I messed up some vital files (stupid me). When I re-applied the separate swap-trick though, I noticed that I had missed a vital step before (setting the delay, so that the partition actually gets used), I fixed that and found my system to be much speedier.
So to me the advantage of multi-partitioning were some speed-gains, but also, and more importantly to a fresh-installer, if you assign separate partitions to: your system (OSX) files; your applications; your user-files; and your swap. Then a fresh-install will simply overwrite the system-partition and leave the rest as it was. In other words, it's nearly painless, and you don't have to back up your files.
Anyway, if I've convinced you... check out this hint on MacOSXhints, and also read the user-comments.
How do you know that multiple partitions improve system performance? Has this been objectively bench-tested?
Suffice to say, this is not a procedure I would recommend to anyone. This is geek-only danger danger will robinson territory. Its only apparent value is in impressing other geeks.
Suffice to say, this is not a procedure I would recommend to anyone. This is geek-only danger danger will robinson territory. Its only apparent value is in impressing other geeks.
Well, I'm not gonna deny that doing this requires some serious playing around with terminal, which is not for everyone. While all this is nearly automatic in windows, macs are entirely different beasts, and I learned a lot about them doing this.
As far as performance-gains go, I'm using the 12" ibook, so... I was trying something that hopefully would make it a little faster. I do think it is, especially in the boot-up.. but I didn't measure, nor would I know how to.
The real gain for me was, as I said, not the speed-gains, but the fact that I don't have to worry so much about losing vital files, as they are all stored on different partitions (as well as a backup-drive).
As far as performance-gains go, I'm using the 12" ibook, so... I was trying something that hopefully would make it a little faster. I do think it is, especially in the boot-up.. but I didn't measure, nor would I know how to.
The real gain for me was, as I said, not the speed-gains, but the fact that I don't have to worry so much about losing vital files, as they are all stored on different partitions (as well as a backup-drive).
If you're going to keep the OS on a separate partition, then remember to leave enough space free for virtual memory too. 
Thats exactly the reason i reinstall windows all the time, but now i'm bored of being bored..
So i ordered a Macbook.
The Cure
Get this program right Here. The name of it is Oynx. Ever since I started using this program I have learned that inorder to keep OS X fast you need to get rid of your old log files. Log files can accumulate to become 100s of megabytes. Also take deleteing old safari bookmarks and cookies drastically speed it up. If you are having weird crashes try deleting system and kernal caches. Best of luck brother
Get this program right Here. The name of it is Oynx. Ever since I started using this program I have learned that inorder to keep OS X fast you need to get rid of your old log files. Log files can accumulate to become 100s of megabytes. Also take deleteing old safari bookmarks and cookies drastically speed it up. If you are having weird crashes try deleting system and kernal caches. Best of luck brother