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Will you upgrade or do a fresh install of Leopard?

Will you do a clean install of Leopard or just upgrade?

  • Reformat

    Votes: 100 58.1%

  • Upgrade

    Votes: 44 25.6%

  • Not sure

    Votes: 28 16.3%
  • Total voters
    172
Clean install. Since I clone my hard drive every night, I will simply use the migration assistant to put everything back in place on my new install.
 
IJ Reilly said:
Never done a clean install, never needed one. They're way too disruptive. That's why I use a Mac.
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Could not have said it any better myself. I have been a Mac user for only 3 years now and only had to upgrade to Tiger, but I have never reformatted either of my Macs. Upgrade for me all the way!
 
I'd have to say Not sure. Reason being I don't know how urgently I'm going to be buying it. But if I was to get Leopard (eventually), it would be a clean install. In a way it's like Windows when going the upgrade route. It's nothing but trouble or at some point down the line it'll catch you out. I don't care how or what some expert or marketing guy says about upgrades. One OS to another OS upgrade is evil!
As when it comes to any OS I've always done clean installs, it feels much better and you know it was done right. Or at least I do from personal experiences.
 
nateDEEZY said:
Nothing beats a fresh reformat!
Click to expand...

It's like pounding your head on the wall. It feels so good when you stop.

slu said:
Could not have said it any better myself. I have been a Mac user for only 3 years now and only had to upgrade to Tiger, but I have never reformatted either of my Macs. Upgrade for me all the way!
Click to expand...

The Mac I use every day started out with 9.x, and has been upgraded to every version of the MacOS since then. I guess that would be seven years now, without a single fresh install. This a major Mac advantage that some people seem anxious to give up. I honestly don't get it.
 
I will do an erase and install because my hard drive is chuck full and I haven't done a re-install for one year, and it's geting kinda sluggesh.
 
How exactly do you do a clean install? I'm on my first Mac, I just want to know how to do it in case I ever need to. Do I need to erase my hard drive? If I do, how do I make sure everything gets backed up properly? Last time I backed up my music, I had to re-rate every one of my 1200 songs. That was a ****ing annoying ***** to say the least, and I don't want to ever have to do that again...
 
Reading through this thread, I wonder if a more informative approach would be to ask 2 questions:

1. Do you think it is necessary to perform a fresh install
2. Will you be performing a fresh install

I get the impression that the responses thus far are more revealing about the personalities and preferences of the individual posters than than shedding insight on the advantages / disadvantages
 
Need some advice with this

Well first off I'm gonna wait for a bit for the bugs/compatibility to be sorted out.

Problem is I have a lot of software (I'm a recording engineer by profession) and music files that I wanna keep and I'm not sure if I have all the install files for of the programs still. If I archive and then install leopard will it keep the tiger system files? Are there any problems associated with this?

Also this may be off topic but I heard that there is a key command on startup that will let you install over the system files but keep your applications and general data. Myth or fact?

Thanks.
 
Plain ol' upgrade. I bought a Mac to work, not to format (*looks at PC with caution*)!
 
I might reformat, my Macbook's playing up a little, and I wouldn't mind clearing it out. Though I'll probably just do an archive and install.
 
I've done both upgrade and clean installs in the past and upgrades have been fine, but now that I have the external hard drive, I'll just reformat. All my files, save for my applications folder, are on my external hard drive anyway.
 
Just to clarify the actual term used in OS X is "Erase and Install" not reformat. I will be doing an "Erase and Install" on my G4 PowerBook as I have like 2 gigs of space left and I could afford to start fresh.
 
I didn't know this many people reformatted. This is my first Mac, and I would rather upgrade then reformat.
 
I have always done clean installs, seemed like the fun thing to do but times have changed and installers have gotten much smarter so as of right now I am leaning towards the if it isn't broken then why fix it. Just think of all the additional free time that I will have :)
 
I'm personally going to reformat. I'm new to the mac (This macbook is my first) and it would be nice to have a second start with it now that I know what to look for in open source software etc.
Not to mention, what's better than having a computer that acts like new with a new OS?::)
 
topgunn said:
Clean install. Since I clone my hard drive every night, I will simply use the migration assistant to put everything back in place on my new install.
Click to expand...

That's the route I'll probably go too. I am new to Mac (have had my MBP since 3/6/07), so I've never done an install of OS X before. I use SuperDuper at least once a week to make a bootable backup on an external firwwire drive. I'll just need to read up on how Migration Assistant actually works (I'm most worried about my iTunes stuff)...
 
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