I have an iMac with Snow Leopard installed, which I was going to give to my daughter. I decided to reformat it so I put the Snow Leopard disc in and I did not see an option for a clean install so I just ran it. After 45 minutes the iMac booted up exactly as it was before. I now know that you have to go to disc utility to do a clean install, I should have checked that first. Anyway my daughter decided shed rather have a laptop so Im keeping the iMac. So what did I do, install Snow Leopard on top of Snow Leopard? Ive been running it for a couple of hours and everything seems to be working as before, stable and no detection of slow down. Why does the disc even allow you to do something like this, what is the point?
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What did I just do? Snow Leopard question
- Thread starter cosrocket
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When you put the Snow Leopard disc in and "re-install" on top of Snow Leopard, it's actually just doing an "Archive and Install". An Archive and Install is useful for helping solve problems that you may experience. It basically reinstalls the system's files but leaves all your stuff untouched. Don't worry, it'll be fine. Heck, it may even be running better.
creating another question from this. should i do this like twice a year to keep it fresh?
I don't think it's true that it does an archive and install. Does it archive the old system somewhere? Around the time of SL release I saw a lot of people confusing Upgrade with Archive and Install.
Mac OS X: About the Archive and Install feature
But either way, you should be fine.
If you had done an archive and install, there should be a new Previous System folder somewhere with all of your original files and folders.
Archive and Install is no longer an option in SL. There's just Install. Even Erase and Install has been removed from the installer (although can still be achieved by erasing in Disk Utility).
I'm guessing they were trying to simplify the installation as much as possible and figured a) archive and install isn't that popular, and b) most people that would use it probably have Time Machine backups now anyway.