Snow Leopard to Mavericks - upgrade or fresh install?

[stgall]

Hi all -

I'm planning to upgrade from Snow Leopard (10.6.8) to Mavericks this weekend on a 2011 MBA with 2GB ram and 1.86GHz Core 2 Duo.

I'm planning to wipe the HD to remove the junk - would forum members recommend reinstalling SL first (using the included reinstall drive) and then upgrading via the App Store, or downloading Mavericks and installing it from a USB key without installing Snow Leopard?

 

[Eithanius]

Are you sure you want to upgrade to Mavericks with ONLY 2GB ram…?

Anyhow, here's the scenario:

If you have any Intel-based apps that are still stuck up using PowerPC based installers, then install SL, install the said apps, then only upgrade to Mv from there.

Else clean install Mv would be a better option...

 

[RedRaven571]

I went the clean install route; I almost always do when upgrading an OS, likely from being a Windows user for so many years. Only thing I'm missing is recovery partition because I made a USB installer....

 

[stgall]

Are you sure you want to upgrade to Mavericks with ONLY 2GB ram…?

You think I shouldn't? I thought the magical memory management of Mavericks was going to turn my MBA into a whole new computer!!

Anyone else running Mavericks on 2GB MBA with 1.86Ghz Core 2 Duo?

 

[Bruno09]

You can install Mavericks on an external hard drive, copy you user folder to it, and test it for a couple of days.

I would not install Mav on a 2 GB machine without having made that test.

Or better : clone your hard drive to an external.
Install Mavericks on the external, and boot from it.
You will be able to test Mavericks and all your apps on Mav. (compatibility, etc...)

 

[FreeWoRLD83]

I went with fresh install just to be on the safe side.

........ Only thing I'm missing is recovery partition because I made a USB installer....

You could have followed this link to create a USB installer that actually creates the recovery partition automatically.

I also first created the usb your way and installed mavericks but having no recovery partition made it feel not the way it is supposed to be and I got pissed so I recreated the USB installer the linked way and reinstalled the darn thing and been happy so far.

 

[mwa]

I upgraded from 10.6, but have noticed slight stutters in some things that never would have stuttered before.

It might be a system cache thing I have to clean up. Not sure if a fresh install would have prevented this or not, or if it's something that will be fixed in a future update to 10.9. I have an early 2011 17" MBP.

I'm investigating it currently...

 

[RedRaven571]

I also first created the usb your way and installed mavericks but having no recovery partition made it feel not the way it is supposed to be and I got pissed so I recreated the USB installer the linked way and reinstalled the darn thing and been happy so far.

Yeah, I know how you feel but (fingers crossed) my install is running so well, I don't want to take a chance by reinstalling. Besides, that's why I have the USB install stick.....

 

[Bitgod]

Haven't had any problems upgrading from 10.6.8, other than I'm having one sound preference issue. Unknown if it's a "bug" or something that got carried over that it doesn't like.

 

[stgall]

A quick update for anyone considering going from SL to Mavericks (2011 MBA with 2GB ram and 1.86GHz Core 2 Duo).

I did it as a straight upgrade first as you can't use a boot disk creator with Snow Leopard to do a clean install. That's where I am now - but it's pretty laggy, especially when using Finder, so I definitely feel the performance has degraded compared to SL. I will do a clean install next and see if it makes much difference as there is a lot of crap on my system...

 

[Bruno09]

Don't forget that after you have installed Mavericks, Spotlight will completely reindex your computer, could take hours.

Reindexing = laggy computer

 

[ufkdo]

I have upgraded my 2010 MBA, with only 2 GBs of RAM from 10.6.8. Mavericks run nearly perfect on my device. Battery has improved significantly as compared to SL.

After upgrading, you should wait for spotlight to reindex everything. And OS will do some other jobs in background. After a couple of hours, everything will be done and there should be no lags.

 

[AtmChm]

I have a 2009 MBA (bought in summer 2010) with 2 GB RAM and 128 GB SSD. I upgraded from SL to Mavericks specifically for the reported longer battery life. I had been getting about 5 hours with SL on a full charge. After the initial install last week, I got less than three hours; however, I think that was the initial run of Mavericks and spotlight and other processes were likely running. I'm testing the battery life again this week to see if I can get an increase in battery life. If not, it's back to Snow Leopard for this MBA. In terms of operation, I have only noticed a few odd glitches early on, but have not seen them lately. Otherwise, seems to run like Mountain Lion does on an iMac I have.

 

[RedRaven571]

You could have followed this link to create a USB installer that actually creates the recovery partition automatically.

FYI, I updated my son's 13" MBP this weekend (also running SL) and found out, you can't use the terminal command to create the USB installer in SL, it gives an error.

However, my daughter's 13" MBP was running ML (bought it this June) and the terminal command worked like a charm. I used the newly created USB installer to update both their MBPs and they both have the recovery partition. It's more important to me to have the recovery partition on their MBPs because Find My Mac won't work without it.