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Tiger > Fresh Install over Upgrade?

FoxyKaye said:
As an advocate of "fresh install" I don't know what the criterion would be for a "sound technical reason", since I'm willing to concede that archive/install would probably work just as well. I have my opinions as to why (if I do upgrade to Tiger) I'll probably do it, which I've shared earlier in the thread. But I suppose it really all boils down to personal preferences and experiences -- I worked in the Windows world until 2000, and never once did I just "upgrade" the OS: that always seemed to be starting down the path of the dark side. Maybe the reasons I do fresh installs on Macs are obsolete holdovers, or they're just a ritual that makes me feel good about installing a new OS.
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A sound technical reason would be avoiding any likely problems encountered in a normal upgrade install.

I'd caution against translating your experience with Windows to the Mac. A good reason for choosing the Mac platform is to avoid precisely this kind of grief and inconvenience (but I suspect you know that already). You are certainly welcome to choose whatever routine makes you feel good, but I guess I have to admit to being a little irritated by hearing this course of action suggested to others so often.

A safer route by far for the genuinely cautious would be to wait for the dust to settle before installing Tiger. Personally, I'm happy to allow others to tread on the bleeding edge. I'll hold out for 10.4.1.
 
FoxyKaye said:
Seems credible to me, which really boils down things to personal preferences. Here's a semi-related question: If you do archive/install, it moves over all your existing programs and preferences. However, if the change in the OS is great enough, wouldn't it be better to at least re-install your programs, especially if they're optimized to take advantage of the new OS? Just curious...
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Tuche (however you spell that)

You're perfectly right, that would be better for your programs and that. Good point.
 
kd0tc0m said:
Shipped to you by 04/15/05? Er.... anyone else see that? :confused:
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No, he said it will ship on 4/15. Though, I find it hard to believe it will take 2 weeks to get to you.

My order status says it will ship on or before 4/28
 
IJ Reilly said:
A safer route by far for the genuinely cautious would be to wait for the dust to settle before installing Tiger. Personally, I'm happy to allow others to tread on the bleeding edge. I'll hold out for 10.4.1.
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I might be going this route myself - I "early adopted" (if you could call it that) both Jaguar and Panther (installing on the 10.2.0 and 10.3.0 releases). It's not that I wasn't happy with either OS, it just seemed I was applying the .1 release with great relief on both.

It's true that Mac OS is stable enough that applying major releases as upgrades has never seemed terribly problematic - old Windows habits die hard, I suppose... :eek:
 
I'm going to do a fresh install, just like others said before, to have a clean slate. I don't care if I'll be fine with just the upgrade. I personally will feel better starting fresh. All I really have to back up is a few pictures and my music anyway. :)
 
Monoxide said:
I'm going to do a fresh install, just like others said before, to have a clean slate. I don't care if I'll be fine with just the upgrade. I personally will feel better starting fresh. All I really have to back up is a few pictures and my music anyway. :)
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Good choice, If I Were You, I would do the same. Fresh install, and I will if I ever have to go to new OSes
 
Pismo said:
All you have to do is copy the folder "iPhoto Library" inside the "Pictures" folder to your external drive and "iTunes" inside the "Music" folder. Once Tiger is installed, drag those folders from your folders back to their respective folders and launch iTunes and iPhoto. Your playlists are photo albums are in those folders so the apps will find them and everything will look te same before the upgrade. Hope this helps and welcome to the Mac family :)
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And before you copy your iTunes files over and erase everything make sure you DEAUTHORIZE your library if you purchased songs from iTunes.
 
Three things:

1- Why would he need to de-authorize his library if he's got iTunes downloads? I've had to restore my iTunes library a couple of times, and when iTunes opens up for the first time and authenticates with the music store the first time I try to play one of the downloads, the music store recognizes that this is the same computer I'd previously authorized. And all of this is after a total wipe of hard drive and reinstall of OS X and everything, so I'm thinking the iTunes music store is storing your Ethernet MAC address to recognize your computer, or something like that. I don't get why he'd need to de-authorize just to re-authorize again, unless you were moving the library to a different computer.

2- As I mentioned above, I've done many installations of system software over the years. I can remember upgrading a computer to OS 7. The rule back then was always to backup documents, install the OS fresh on a clean HD, then reinstall your apps fresh, then the documents, and tweak all your settings. I've always kept that habit, but I don't think it's just a habit. I think it's actually better. You're for sure clearing all the garbage out of your system folder, all the random preference files and frameworks left over from long-ago deleted apps.

3- Slightly off topic, but does anybody else do a fresh install on a BRAND NEW computer direct from Apple? On my brand new eMac I got a few months ago, it FOR SURE ran better after I had performed a clean install of OS X. Out of the box, the intro movie stuttered a lil bit, and Finder seemed pretty slow. The next day I wiped the drive and did a restore from the CD, and it seemed like a totally different machine. Maybe a fluke...
 
newton213 said:
2- As I mentioned above, I've done many installations of system software over the years. I can remember upgrading a computer to OS 7. The rule back then was always to backup documents, install the OS fresh on a clean HD, then reinstall your apps fresh, then the documents, and tweak all your settings. I've always kept that habit, but I don't think it's just a habit. I think it's actually better. You're for sure clearing all the garbage out of your system folder, all the random preference files and frameworks left over from long-ago deleted apps.

3- Slightly off topic, but does anybody else do a fresh install on a BRAND NEW computer direct from Apple? On my brand new eMac I got a few months ago, it FOR SURE ran better after I had performed a clean install of OS X. Out of the box, the intro movie stuttered a lil bit, and Finder seemed pretty slow. The next day I wiped the drive and did a restore from the CD, and it seemed like a totally different machine. Maybe a fluke...
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Responding to the last two items:

2- Just as Windows-using habits don't translate well to OSX, neither do pre-OSX habits translate well to OSX. I don't recall ever having to reinstall a MacOS, irrespective of the version, and I certainly don't make a habit of it, even though with the classic MacOS, extensions could conflict and cause system crashes, so it paid not to accumulate ones no longer in use. Even so, I've always done any cleaning out that might be beneficial on my own time and on my own terms. I find this to be far less disruptive in the long run.

3- Quite possibly the performance problems you experienced with this machine could have been fixed by some other method than a clean install. That said, your experience belies the value of clean installs, since the OS was clean as it was ever going to be when you took your eMac out of the box.
 
Response to the 1st question.

If you don't deauthorize your iTunes library that old system still counts against your limit of how many computers you can play the songs on. So if you do two many clean installs, you will no longer be able to authorize the new install of the system to play the music!

Basicaly, a new OS install counts as a new computer, and you have a limited amount of computers you can authorize. So to not waist one you have to deauthorize the computer before you do a clean install.
 
Yeah, a clean install of a system is NOT going to count towards the number of computers you have authorized. Like I said, I've tried it. I keep 3 different computers authorized, two on my home network, and a third at work. Once when I had a computer I was getting rid of, I wiped the hard drive, did a clean install of OS X, THEN realized that I'd forgotten to deauthorize it. I hadn't set up ANYTHING other than internet access, which OS X set itself. All I did was open iTunes, go to the "deauthorize this computer" selection in the menu bar, and two seconds later, the Music Store removed the computer from my authorized list. It clearly shows that the authorization is basically acting like a browser cookie, but inside iTunes. When you authorize iTunes with your Apple ID, it tells your computer it's okay to play those songs linked to that ID. The music store itself recognizes the difference between computers when it authorizes and deauthorizes, it's not in the system on the computer. It's a pretty neat trick.

And about my system running better after a clean install than out of the box, this was done on two separate computers, different configurations, bought roughly a month apart. BOTH showed a performance improvement. Not saying this is cold hard science, only that there was something odd about Apple's install. And yes, translating habits from Windows to Mac, Classic OS to OS X, not always a good idea, not always relevant. But you'll remember this clean install issue was big in the first age of OS X as well, going from 10.0 to 10.1, 10.1 to 10.2. I've still got the Macworld and MacAddict magazines around here somewhere that said to steer clear of the upgrade and archive and install methods. Do a search on their websites, I'm sure you'll find the articles. Seemed like Apple fixed most of the problems with 10.3, but I still won't take any chances. The way I look at it, better to spend a few extra minutes and BE SURE it's done right, than risk something happening during the upgrade that's going to cause you a lot more grief. I dunno, maybe if I didn't have an external drive I'd think differently. It makes this stuff fairly easy for me. If you've only got the internal drive, it makes things a lot more complicated. Anyways, just my 2 cents. I'd recommend all you guys just ask a Mac Genius at the Apple Store when you pick up your copies of Tiger. Tell him your basic setup, and ask what he would do if he were you. They've seen and heard pretty much all the problems that could happen, so their advice would be pretty valuable.
 
Bad Sectors and Reformating for Tiger

Ok, today I got a badsector on my PB. Detected during the silverkeeper backup which dropped out. TechToolDeluxe did a surface scan and stopped after 30mins or so saying bad sector etc

I am trying to figure out the best way to manage this situation.

I have a big enough external HDD in the LaCie to put everything across BUT the bad sector makes the backup tool Silverkeeper drop out...

I should? be able to manually move any directories etc but dont know the best way to do this. Any advice?

Also, if I move directors - whole user accounts - can they "easily" be reenabled under Tiger?

Also, whats the best way to reformat my HDD to make sure the badsectors are identfied and closed off to stop future problems?
 
newton213 said:
And about my system running better after a clean install than out of the box, this was done on two separate computers, different configurations, bought roughly a month apart. BOTH showed a performance improvement. Not saying this is cold hard science, only that there was something odd about Apple's install.
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Well again, you're talking about the imaged OS install from the factory, not an upgrade -- so even if you're correct about the performance improvements of reinstallation on these new Macs, that doesn't tell us anything about upgrading. I am still very skeptical about the claims that clean installs provide benefits beyond "feeling good," which is a sensation that not all of us share.

If you can find some objective evidence that I'm wrong, then we can discuss it. But until then, I'm sticking to my guns: clean installs are a placebo cure for a disease you haven't even got.
 
aswitcher said:
Ok, today I got a badsector on my PB. Detected during the silverkeeper backup which dropped out. TechToolDeluxe did a surface scan and stopped after 30mins or so saying bad sector etc

I am trying to figure out the best way to manage this situation.

I have a big enough external HDD in the LaCie to put everything across BUT the bad sector makes the backup tool Silverkeeper drop out...

I should? be able to manually move any directories etc but dont know the best way to do this. Any advice?

Also, if I move directors - whole user accounts - can they "easily" be reenabled under Tiger?

Also, whats the best way to reformat my HDD to make sure the badsectors are identfied and closed off to stop future problems?
Click to expand...

Had a similar problem 2 days ago: PB suddenly started to act funny (couldn't start programs anymore). So I tried a restart, unfortunately the PB didn't start anymore, it stayed on the white screen showing the apple and that "wheel" forever. TechTool Pro scanned the HD for 4 hours, then found an critical error (don't remember what), and then repaired it for another hour. But my computer still couldn't boot, so I booted with the Osx system CD and reinstalled Osx, unforunately to do a "backup and restore", the system needed more than 2GB, but I had less than 1GB free, so I could only install the absolutely essential parts of Osx. Installing took VERY long too (it said 2min, but took 15!), but then my PB booted again. All of my data was still there, but now my system was lacking the BSD, java, drivers... so I had to free up space on my HD by backing up and then reinstall Osx again, now with all the options that I actually need. Now the PB works again, like a charm.
So, that's a nice way to spend an whole afternoon and an evening, when actually you should be writing your thesis.... :(
 
You started with the shotgun, and when that didn't work, you tried couple of rounds of heavy artillery. I'd be willing to bet that neither were necessary.

Looks like it's time to recommend Applejack again.
 
IJ Reilly said:
You started with the shotgun, and when that didn't work, you tried couple of rounds of heavy artillery. I'd be willing to bet that neither were necessary.

Looks like it's time to recommend Applejack again.
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Thanks.. probably that could've saved some time :eek:
 
Tomaz said:
Had a similar problem 2 days ago: PB suddenly started to act funny (couldn't start programs anymore). So I tried a restart, unfortunately the PB didn't start anymore, it stayed on the white screen showing the apple and that "wheel" forever. TechTool Pro scanned the HD for 4 hours, then found an critical error (don't remember what), and then repaired it for another hour. But my computer still couldn't boot, so I booted with the Osx system CD and reinstalled Osx, unforunately to do a "backup and restore", the system needed more than 2GB, but I had less than 1GB free, so I could only install the absolutely essential parts of Osx. Installing took VERY long too (it said 2min, but took 15!), but then my PB booted again. All of my data was still there, but now my system was lacking the BSD, java, drivers... so I had to free up space on my HD by backing up and then reinstall Osx again, now with all the options that I actually need. Now the PB works again, like a charm.
So, that's a nice way to spend an whole afternoon and an evening, when actually you should be writing your thesis.... :(
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Having less than a GB free could be the source of your problem.
 
I've never had a problem with archive and install but this time I'm going to treat myself *gasp*, I'm going to completely format and install for a totally clean system. Too many years of trials, hacks and "I wonder what would happen if I..." on this system really.

Looking forward to a clean system :)

AppleMatt
 
IJ Reilly said:
Well again, you're talking about the imaged OS install from the factory, not an upgrade -- so even if you're correct about the performance improvements of reinstallation on these new Macs, that doesn't tell us anything about upgrading. I am still very skeptical about the claims that clean installs provide benefits beyond "feeling good," which is a sensation that not all of us share.

If you can find some objective evidence that I'm wrong, then we can discuss it. But until then, I'm sticking to my guns: clean installs are a placebo cure for a disease you haven't even got.
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Which is why I put it at the end of my post and said it was off topic.
 
IJ Reily said:
Well again, you're talking about the imaged OS install from the factory, not an upgrade -- so even if you're correct about the performance improvements of reinstallation on these new Macs, that doesn't tell us anything about upgrading. I am still very skeptical about the claims that clean installs provide benefits beyond "feeling good," which is a sensation that not all of us share.

If you can find some objective evidence that I'm wrong, then we can discuss it. But until then, I'm sticking to my guns: clean installs are a placebo cure for a disease you haven't even got.
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Fragmentation, might be something to look at, or even corrupt files, when upgrading, you're pushing aside some files and you may even corrupt some in the process. You take files from point A to point B and it misses just one byte, BAM no more mister file or the fragments mess up the file. Or when upgrading it adds files, it puts them in differential spaces (fragmentation) - EXAMPLE:
X = used space that was already there
O = unused space
F = fragment file
[X][X][F][X][F][F][F]
[O][O][O][O][O][O]
[O][X][F][F][F][F][O]
[O][X][F][F][X][X][X]
 
slooksterPSV said:
Are you going to zero all data and let that go for hours? - For the really clean system.
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Well I wasn't going to, but you make it sound so tempting...

AppleMatt (save me from myself)
 
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