I know this topic has been covered ad nauseam in these forums, but I must have some kind of mental block because I just can seem to figure out which method I'm supposed to use to accomplish what I want.
I have Lion installed on my iMac through the App Store upgrade process. I am now looking to erase everything on my hard drive and install Lion clean as if it's a brand new computer. I have a time capsule with backups if anything goes wrong but what I plan to do is just copy my itunes, iphoto, and document libraries onto a LaCie hard drive manually and then after the clean install of Lion is done I will just put those three items back. I will manually re-install any other programs I had.
My questions are:
1. Do I follow the instructions to make a Lion USB drive I have seen on here and install from that?
2. Do I have to do anything first to erase everything or will the install of Lion take care of that?
3. Because it's a clean install I understand that I don't need my Snow Leopard disks, is that true? (Because I have no idea where it is).
4. Will this accomplish what I want, a clean hard drive like from the store with just Lion installed?
5. What will happen when I turn the time capsule back on, will it just continue backing up the system as normal in it's new state or do I have to do anything to erase the Time Capsule (after I'm sure didn't screw anything up)?
I know there is a lot of debate about why someone would want to do this and whether it's worth it, I just feel like the system has slowed down since Lion was installed and I want to do it clean to see if that will help. I know some people argue it won't, but I'm willing to give it a try. Plus the computer is a few years old now and I just to keep things clean and running smoothly.
Let me know and I'm sure there will be some follow up questions as I probably left some things out or used some incorrect terminology.
Mark
I have Lion installed on my iMac through the App Store upgrade process. I am now looking to erase everything on my hard drive and install Lion clean as if it's a brand new computer. I have a time capsule with backups if anything goes wrong but what I plan to do is just copy my itunes, iphoto, and document libraries onto a LaCie hard drive manually and then after the clean install of Lion is done I will just put those three items back. I will manually re-install any other programs I had.
My questions are:
1. Do I follow the instructions to make a Lion USB drive I have seen on here and install from that?
2. Do I have to do anything first to erase everything or will the install of Lion take care of that?
3. Because it's a clean install I understand that I don't need my Snow Leopard disks, is that true? (Because I have no idea where it is).
4. Will this accomplish what I want, a clean hard drive like from the store with just Lion installed?
5. What will happen when I turn the time capsule back on, will it just continue backing up the system as normal in it's new state or do I have to do anything to erase the Time Capsule (after I'm sure didn't screw anything up)?
I know there is a lot of debate about why someone would want to do this and whether it's worth it, I just feel like the system has slowed down since Lion was installed and I want to do it clean to see if that will help. I know some people argue it won't, but I'm willing to give it a try. Plus the computer is a few years old now and I just to keep things clean and running smoothly.
Let me know and I'm sure there will be some follow up questions as I probably left some things out or used some incorrect terminology.
Mark
