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Will a clean reinstallation of Mountain Lion on a 2010 iMac speed things up?

K

kapalua12

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jun 20, 2010
300
1
United States
I just "replaced" my 2010 i7 2.8 GHz iMac with 12 GB RAM with the new 2012 model. On the 2010 iMac I originally had Snow Leopard, then skipped Lion and then upgraded to Mountain Lion which I love.

Lately I'm seeing more beach balls on the "old iMac" as programs load and do work and I can't help but think that if I were to erase and reformat the 1TB hard drive and reinstall a clean version of ML and reinstall all my apps, etc. the computer would run like new again.

Would doing a clean, fresh reinstall really make that much of a difference in speed? Or am I just noticing the difference because of the lightening fast speed of the new iMac?

It's a lot of work to reconfigure everything and don't want to do it unless there would be a noticeable speed improvement.
 
That 2010 model has an extra sata connection on it via the logic board. I'd add an SSD and pair it via your HDD to create a DIY fusion drive. The speed of the drive is the limiter NOT your processor NOT your memory. You will breath new life in your Mac. It will run better that new.

Other World computing has a kit. They will even turn it for you. Ifixit also has a post and parts.

See https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1564795/

The upgrade - I did myself. It is difficult but doable if you take your time. If not - just have OWC or another tech do it. BTW - you can get by with 128 GB SSD - did it on my 2009 via optical and works great as well.
 
Interesting. I'm not going to do it myself. Perhaps sending it out makes sense but it would hurt to send my beloved iMac away for a while.

Now that I have my new iMac, I'm not sure it's worth going through all that.

Good points though. I'll consider it. Thanks for the idea. I was considering it.
 
kapalua12 said:
Interesting. I'm not going to do it myself. Perhaps sending it out makes sense but it would hurt to send my beloved iMac away for a while.

Now that I have my new iMac, I'm not sure it's worth going through all that.

Good points though. I'll consider it. Thanks for the idea. I was considering it.
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If its 2.8 i7, it's a 2009 imac. The 2010 had a 2.93 i7.
 
Yep, my old one is a 2.8 I just have noticed more beach balls and it's annoying.
Hate to send it off to have someone open it and put in an SSD but I am otherwise an all SSD owner otherwise. Usually in Raid 0 with backups so I can restore a raid volume in literally minutes.

How long does OWC take to add a 512 SSD and get it back to the owner? What's the cost?
 
kapalua12 said:
I just "replaced" my 2010 i7 2.8 GHz iMac with 12 GB RAM with the new 2012 model. On the 2010 iMac I originally had Snow Leopard, then skipped Lion and then upgraded to Mountain Lion which I love.
Click to expand...

Did you use Migration Assistant to bring in your user accounts from the 2010 iMac? If so, it's possible you've dragged a lot of old crud from your old installation(s). I did the same thing when setting up my 2011 Macbook Air — I pulled in my old Snow Leopard account from a previous Mac. It worked ok, but I was seeing a lot of beachballs. Finally bit the bullet and did a clean install and the machine ran a LOT more smoothly.
 
I believe you may have misunderstood. It's the 2010 machine that is a little more "beach bally" . I did not use migration assistant on the new machine. The new machine is more than perfect.
 
I personally do a full system reformat every 3-4 months. My home folder is on a separate drive, typically, so I just reinstall the OS and my applications, and I'm exactly back to how I used to be.

However, everything seems "cleaner" every time I do it :)
 
kapalua12 said:
...
Would doing a clean, fresh reinstall really make that much of a difference in speed? Or am I just noticing the difference because of the lightening fast speed of the new iMac?
...
Click to expand...
What do you actually use your old Mac for?

I would run a hardware test make sure your disk and other hardware is alright. I usually only see beach balls when I do something memory intensive and it's waiting on the disk.

If all the hardware is running properly then a clean install might help. But if you do do that, only install applications that you use and make sure they are current versions or at least the version you intend to use.
 
curmudgeon32 said:
Did you use Migration Assistant to bring in your user accounts from the 2010 iMac? If so, it's possible you've dragged a lot of old crud from your old installation(s). I did the same thing when setting up my 2011 Macbook Air — I pulled in my old Snow Leopard account from a previous Mac. It worked ok, but I was seeing a lot of beachballs. Finally bit the bullet and did a clean install and the machine ran a LOT more smoothly.
Click to expand...

This!

From experience...very much this. The only time I've ever done a fresh clean installation, is like a week after I've used the migration assistant. That was on a 2011 to similar 2011 iMac.
 
Omne666 said:
This!

From experience...very much this. The only time I've ever done a fresh clean installation, is like a week after I've used the migration assistant. That was on a 2011 to similar 2011 iMac.
Click to expand...

Where can I find the instructions on doing a clean install? The hardware is fine.
 
DerekS said:
To put it bluntly...no. This isn't Windows.
Click to expand...

May not be Windows but in the past when I've done a fresh install on my old MBP it brings new life to it. I remember I was running various versions of OSX on my MBP and upgrades from previous OSX versions that it started to get bogged down. Especially during boot.

When I re-installed ML a few months back it zipped along nicely.
 
You might want to check out this link:

http://www.scsc-online.com/How-To.html

That company is starting to put out some how-to articles, with evaluating Mountain Lion performance problems being one of them. Just look at the list and you'll see it.

I dumped ML and went back to Lion because I had too many bugs. I liked ML better, and I transferred the ML volume to an external drive. When they get the performance working better and the bugs fixed I'll migrate back.
 
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