Time for a clear out - advice

[MoodyM]

I switched to Mac and bought an iMac in July 2008. In June 2010 I switched to a MacBook Pro, and used a firewire cable to transfer everything across using the transfer tools, so my MBP ended up exactly as my iMac was.

Lately I've been getting a lot of silly file errors, spinning beach balls, sluggish performance, etc, and I though "sod it, time for a fresh install and clear out".

I do have a full Time Machine backup (over the network, sits on a USB drive attached to my Mac Mini), however since getting my MBP I've added a Boot Camp partition for Windows 7 which I don't want to lose, which obviously isn't part of the backup.

Having never flattened and restored a Mac, my main concerns are:

a) If I do an Erase & Install, etc, will I lose/affect my Boot Camp partition?

b) If I simply restore from the full TM backup, am I simply restoring all the problems/sluggishness, etc, that I'm trying to solve?

c) If it's better to do a brand new install and simply restore certain files (music, documents, etc) rather than a full TM restore, is this easy to do?

I'm panicing somewhat about this! Thanks a lot.

I should add I've tried repair disk, disk utility, iDefrag, CleanMyMac, etc, etc

 

[Hal Itosis]

I should add I've tried repair disk, disk utility, iDefrag, CleanMyMac, etc, etc

Did you rebuild the launchservices database yet?

How full is the boot volume? [capacity vs. free]

 

[MoodyM]

500GB drive, 200GB free

 

[Hal Itosis]

<shrug>

Plenty of free space there.

Rebuilding the LS database and maybe a doing DiskWarrior directory optimization should do her. Or perhaps a deep cache cleaning with AppleJack. [?]

</shrug>



Anyway... to answer this part:

a) If I do an Erase & Install, etc, will I lose/affect my Boot Camp partition?

So long as you're careful to erase just the *partition* (volume) by selecting it in Disk Utility, and not the selecting the entire disk... then yes, other partitions will remain untouched. [i can't vouch 100% for how Installer.app might handle the situation... so i specified Disk Utility there. I might/could assume Installer.app would behave the same, but i haven't actually tested it.]