So, I'm wanting to clean things up on my Macbook early 2008, and I'm wondering if a re-install would be necessary, or if there are other options I have to clean things up easily.
If I were to reinstall, I would be doing so from a Snow Leopard USB drive, and I would also have other important files copied onto an external that I have.
I'm also wondering if reinstalling would mess up anything on my iPhone, as it is synced to my iTunes.
If you think it would be easier to just take an hour or two and go through some unnecessary files than to copy some stuff and do a re-install, let me know 🙂
I recently upgraded to a Seagate Momentus XT 500 GB 7200 RPM/4 GB SSD "Hybrid" HDD and 4 gig of ram in my early 2008 (Penryn) White Macbook. Perhaps there is something I did that might help you decide...
Option One - Archive and Install:
1 - Pop in and boot from your SL DVD (or whatever) and pick "archive and install."
2 - Allow Software update to download and install the latest combo update.
3 - Done. Everything comes back including the finder folders you had open.
Option Two - Wipe and Install:
Before you begin, make sure your only copy of your data doesn't sit in Apple folders/packages like iPhoto Library, iTunes and Mail.app. I have lost data in 2 of these three and was lucky I had backups.
Normally, I simply do an archive and install. It's all I've ever needed. More recently, I wound up doing a fresh install because I upgraded my hard drive. I did the following:
1 - Make a Time Machine backup on a local firewire disk (faster)
2 - pop in the new hard drive (in your case you can skip this)
3 - pop in and boot from your Snow Leopard DVD (or whatever)
4 - Launch disk utility from the SL dvd. Format the disk as HFS+ Journaled (I saw instructions on the net that said something about a guid option. I ignored this so it must have been the default).
5 - Install OS X
6 - When prompted - pick migrate from Time Machine backup
7 - Allow software update to install the latest combo update
8 - Mail.app might get lost and confused after a TM restore so you might have to delete its plist files and mailboxes and start over
9 - TM might become "confused" if you try to back up to the same TM backup you just used to restore. I decided to simply rename it and start a new one so I could always "fall back" to the state of things when I replaced my HDD. In another week or two, I'll simply delete it.
In all honesty, there is a third option which is Wipe and Install without using a TM backup to restore. This is what Windows users have to contend with and I don't think it's worth bothering with.
