Tiger > Fresh Install over Upgrade?

[IJ Reilly]

Fragmentation, might be something to look at, or even corrupt files, when upgrading, (snip)

Fragmentation in OSX -- is it an issue? This seems to be one of the great raging debates in the Mac kingdom these days. Personally, I have no opinion, but somehow I imagine others will volunteer their feelings.

As for "corrupt files" -- I prefer mine to be law abiding. Seriously, the biggest problem with corruption seems to be with preference files. This can be detected in a number of different ways, and fixed much more easily than by reinstalling the OS.

Again, IMO (of course).

 

[aswitcher]

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

Any advice on the steps to take to get the old user aco**** info like keychains etc across?

 

[slooksterPSV]

Fragmentation in OSX -- is it an issue? This seems to be one of the great raging debates in the Mac kingdom these days. Personally, I have no opinion, but somehow I imagine others will volunteer their feelings.

As for "corrupt files" -- I prefer mine to be law abiding. Seriously, the biggest problem with corruption seems to be with preference files. This can be detected in a number of different ways, and fixed much more easily than by reinstalling the OS.

Again, IMO (of course).

Your right, Mac's are so stable. It defragments itself and corrupt files? Just preferences, and thats it. One thing to think about though is will it update some of the files? Right now, the macs at my school are having a little trouble updating to the newest version of DIR-PPC-Shockwave (Shockwave Director Plug-in). Its 9.432 on the other machines, but on the 4 I've updated it to 10.1.0 after removing the plug-in and installing Flash again. (Not flash MX, but the shockwave flash player). If I ran the updated Flash Player setup, it wouldn't update any of the files, but if I deleted the file(s) and updated, it would update them.

 

[IJ Reilly]

Your right, Mac's are so stable. It defragments itself and corrupt files? Just preferences, and thats it. One thing to think about though is will it update some of the files? Right now, the macs at my school are having a little trouble updating to the newest version of DIR-PPC-Shockwave (Shockwave Director Plug-in). Its 9.432 on the other machines, but on the 4 I've updated it to 10.1.0 after removing the plug-in and installing Flash again. (Not flash MX, but the shockwave flash player). If I ran the updated Flash Player setup, it wouldn't update any of the files, but if I deleted the file(s) and updated, it would update them.

I'm sure I don't get your point. As I said, I don't have an opinion about de-fragmentation in OSX. I have heard the arguments one way and another and haven't found either camp to be totally convincing. All I can say with confidence is that if the solution to disk fragmentation is reinstalling the OS... then I surely want to know much more about this awful problem and why I've never encountered it.

Corrupted preferences seem to be a recurring if somewhat uncommon problem in OSX. I think it's happened to me exactly once, and it's certainly not an issue that would drive me to reinstall the OS, if only because finding and fixing corrupted preference files is a trivial matter. Rotting permissions is a much more serious and common problem, but again, the symptoms are usually clear and nonfatal, and the fix is trivial.

 

[slooksterPSV]

I'm sure I don't get your point. As I said, I don't have an opinion about de-fragmentation in OSX. I have heard the arguments one way and another and haven't found either camp to be totally convincing. All I can say with confidence is that if the solution to disk fragmentation is reinstalling the OS... then I surely want to know much more about this awful problem and why I've never encountered it.

Corrupted preferences seem to be a recurring if somewhat uncommon problem in OSX. I think it's happened to me exactly once, and it's certainly not an issue that would drive me to reinstall the OS, if only because finding and fixing corrupted preference files is a trivial matter. Rotting permissions is a much more serious and common problem, but again, the symptoms are usually clear and nonfatal, and the fix is trivial.

You know, that wouldn't be a difficult problem to fix, just have a user set an option that checks the file before you open it (like if you click to open it) to see what its preferences are and fix them if needed.

 

[IJ Reilly]

You know, that wouldn't be a difficult problem to fix, just have a user set an option that checks the file before you open it (like if you click to open it) to see what its preferences are and fix them if needed.

The aforementioned Applejack checks for corrupted preference files, but this is not the only way.

Incidentally, here is the official word on fragmentation:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=25668

I don't think we need to get into this debate here, but in short, Apple's advice is, fragmentation is a non-issue in OSX.