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solarisc

macrumors member
Original poster
Apr 14, 2006
59
0
I just a newbie Mac user and i wonder is there any similar to system restore as in windows? Or anything similar to that. For instance, if the updates for Mac OS was bad, could i downgrade or restore it to the previous version?

Thanks in advance

S
 
Hi solarisc ..

Welcome to the Mac community! I know you will have many hours of happy computing ahead of you ....

I'd like to present my views on your question ... other's may vary ...

You may choose to not apply any new updates and just keep things the way you have them presently .. which I assume is a version of Tiger.

There are many users of Mac OS X still running earlier version of OSX like Jaguar, or Panther .... and are very happy with their systems ... They may want or need to install the occassional security update but that's all ....

There are 2 types of updates ... security updates and system updates.

Tiger is at a very stable version release .... so it may not be necessary for you to consider applying any more updates ...you could for example install only the security updates if you wanted to.

Leopard will be along soon and you may just wait till then and "upgrade". Or at that time the system updates will have all the bugs worked out of them and you can update then. For example, now I'm running the last and latest update of Panther ... version 10.3.9 ... but for the longest time I just stayed at 10.3.6.

The other thing to do is if you want to keep current with all the updates ..
wait for a week or two to see if there are any major issues with the updates. You can read about them on one of the numerous forums ...

If you have to "backtrack" to an earlier version of the OS ... here is how you do it ...it's really quite easy ...

Archive and Install
http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/archiveinstall.html

Then install combo update of version you want to revert to ..
Standalone Installers ...
http://www.apple.com/support/downloads//

Some general advice before doing an update ...
Before any system or security update ..
1. Disconnect all peripherals except keyboard and mouse ..
2. Make sure sleep and screensaver are disabled ....
3. Quit all other apps ..

You should also make sure you are repairing permissions on a regular basis. This is a great app for doing that and a few other things ...

Macaroni - Just Set it and Forget It!
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/9633


Here is some more info for you re: Updating ...
The X Lab - Why Update?
http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/installswupdates.html

Keep this app on hand for troubleshooting ..
...Onyx
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/11582
Go to Automation Pane ..
Check all the boxes EXCEPT
1. Optimize the system
2. Hidden DS Store Files
3. Links between documents and applications

Also choose "Clear All" in the button box for caches. Then execute

These settings perform three basic troubleshooting procedures ...
1. Repair permissions
2. Run Unix maintenance (cron) scripts
3. Clear caches

With Macaroni and Onyx ... you can eliminate almost all of the few problems users might run into ...

For the ultimate in protection I recommend
Disk Warrior
http://www.alsoftinc.com/DiskWarrior/index.html

And don't forget to back up!
SuperDuper
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/13803

Carbon Copy Cloner
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/7032

iMsafe
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/8874

The X Lab - Backup Advice
http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/backuprecovery.html

Cheers!
 
berg said:
Hi solarisc ..

Welcome to the Mac community! I know you will have many hours of happy computing ahead of you ....

I'd like to present my views on your question ... other's may vary ...

You may choose to not apply any new updates and just keep things the way you have them presently .. which I assume is a version of Tiger.

There are many users of Mac OS X still running earlier version of OSX like Jaguar, or Panther .... and are very happy with their systems ... They may want or need to install the occassional security update but that's all ....

There are 2 types of updates ... security updates and system updates.

Tiger is at a very stable version release .... so it may not be necessary for you to consider applying any more updates ...you could for example install only the security updates if you wanted to.

Leopard will be along soon and you may just wait till then and "upgrade". Or at that time the system updates will have all the bugs worked out of them and you can update then. For example, now I'm running the last and latest update of Panther ... version 10.3.9 ... but for the longest time I just stayed at 10.3.6.

The other thing to do is if you want to keep current with all the updates ..
wait for a week or two to see if there are any major issues with the updates. You can read about them on one of the numerous forums ...

If you have to "backtrack" to an earlier version of the OS ... here is how you do it ...it's really quite easy ...

Archive and Install
http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/archiveinstall.html

Then install combo update of version you want to revert to ..
Standalone Installers ...
http://www.apple.com/support/downloads//

Some general advice before doing an update ...
Before any system or security update ..
1. Disconnect all peripherals except keyboard and mouse ..
2. Make sure sleep and screensaver are disabled ....
3. Quit all other apps ..

You should also make sure you are repairing permissions on a regular basis. This is a great app for doing that and a few other things ...

Macaroni - Just Set it and Forget It!
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/9633


Here is some more info for you re: Updating ...
The X Lab - Why Update?
http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/installswupdates.html

Keep this app on hand for troubleshooting ..
...Onyx
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/11582
Go to Automation Pane ..
Check all the boxes EXCEPT
1. Optimize the system
2. Hidden DS Store Files
3. Links between documents and applications

Also choose "Clear All" in the button box for caches. Then execute

These settings perform three basic troubleshooting procedures ...
1. Repair permissions
2. Run Unix maintenance (cron) scripts
3. Clear caches

With Macaroni and Onyx ... you can eliminate almost all of the few problems users might run into ...

For the ultimate in protection I recommend
Disk Warrior
http://www.alsoftinc.com/DiskWarrior/index.html

And don't forget to back up!
SuperDuper
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/13803

Carbon Copy Cloner
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/7032

iMsafe
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/8874

The X Lab - Backup Advice
http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/backuprecovery.html

Cheers!
Click to expand...

no offense to you dude, but judging by the length of ur reply, i'd say u have a bit too much time on ur hand.
 
Hi sam ..

That's funny ... someone else mentioned the same thing on another part of this forum ...

The thing is I don't have to type much of anything ....

I've got most of the troubleshooting answers in clip bins in
iClip ....
http://inventive.us/iClip/

So I've only typed it once actually ... and saved it in one of these bins.
The bins are related to the particular issue ...

It's better than piecemeal troubleshooting bit by bit back and forth ..
I give out as much as I know for the problem at hand and update to solutions in the bins as i go along ...

I probably had too much coffee today too ....
 
berg said:
Hi sam ..

That's funny ... someone else mentioned the same thing on another part of this forum ...

The thing is I don't have to type much of anything ....

I've got most of the troubleshooting answers in clip bins in
iClip ....
http://inventive.us/iClip/

So I've only typed it once actually ... and saved it in one of these bins.
The bins are related to the particular issue ...

It's better than piecemeal troubleshooting bit by bit back and forth ..
I give out as much as I know for the problem at hand and update to solutions in the bins as i go along ...

I probably had too much coffee today too ....
Click to expand...

ahh... nice dude...!
 
First and foremost, thank you Berg. I appreciate your time. And Sam, you ain't helping ;)

So I take it there is no similar feature of simply restoring the system to any previous time point as you do in windows.

And another question which is related, is that i am still using windows and i will have to switch it back and forth between Mac and windows however, there is compability issue (NTFS and FAT format). My question is I have a 200G HD and now thinking of format it as FAT, do I still have 200G or it should be less (136G max i believe)

Once again, Thanks so much Berg, I will slow explore the links you gave me

Sincerely
S
 
solarisc said:
So I take it there is no similar feature of simply restoring the system to any previous time point as you do in windows.
Click to expand...
More often than not, the reason you have to do this in Windows is that either the change you made to the system broke something in your registry, installed in incompatible version of a DLL, or is incompatible with one of your hardware drivers. This (generally) doesn't happen on Macs because they don't have a single monolithic registry, install mostly self-conatined apps, and have much less variation in the hardware that is present. As such it is much harder to completely b0rk up your system, but it does occasionally happen, and here's where OS X shines in giving you other more useful workarounds.

1) Given that you can boot Macs from external drives you can just have an backup OS on a separate external drive to use "just in case".

2) Assuming you have access to another Mac you can easily boot your Mac in target mode and access all of your Apps and files using your Mac as an external drive.

Is your 200G an external drive you intend to use for data that is shared between the Mac and Windows?

B
 
solarisc said:
So I take it there is no similar feature of simply restoring the system to any previous time point as you do in windows.
Sincerely
S
Click to expand...

You can achieve the same result with SuperDuper (or CarbonCopyCloner which I haven't used personally). SuperDuper will save an image of your hard disk to either another bootable disk or partition, or to an image file. If you need to restore you can boot from your saved image and restore the image of your choice. You can keep multiple backups in image files limited only by how much disk space you have on your archive drives. If you pay for SuperDuper you get to be able to schedule these backups automatically.

I never do an OS X update without making a backup image first. So far I've never had a problem with an update, but I know if I do I can revert back to where I was without any problems.
 
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