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LittleBastad · Apr 10, 2007, 01:19 PM

I have a question about setting up a new Mac.

If all goes well and the money situation works itself out, my wife and I are planning on buying an iMac to replace our PC, which died a horrible death over the weekend. I remember reading online somewhere about doing some sort of special install on a new Mac in order to save space. That is, instead of just turning the machine on and starting to use it, the advice was to reinstall the machine from scratch so that I could omit unnecessary printer drivers and languages.

Can anyone help me find information on this and/or tell me if it's necessary/unnecessary (and how much space it actually saves)?

Big Mac · Apr 10, 2007, 01:24 PM

iMacs have big hard drives, and unless you expect to use a lot of space it's probably not the best investment of your time to trim the installation down.

LittleBastad · Apr 10, 2007, 01:34 PM

Thanks, Big Mac. That's kind of what I wanted to hear. I really want to be able to get going once I get the machine.

Of course, on an unrelated note, I just discovered that I won't be able to run Boot Camp because my Windows XP CD is an upgrade disc. So I'm going to have to figure out what to do about that. Probably means I have to get Parallels (not that I mind getting it, but it does cost more money...)

Here's hoping my migration goes smoothly, whenever it finally happens.

Dr. DDS · Apr 11, 2007, 10:40 AM

I just reinstalled OSX on a friend's powerbook and i saved 3Gb. I installed only his printer's drivers, one language and not installed garageband (2,8 Gb!!).

LittleBastad · Apr 11, 2007, 11:39 AM

That's pretty impressive, Dr. DDS. Thanks for the tip. But was most of that GarageBand and its loops? Because I think I want to keep GarageBand around.

Dr. DDS · Apr 11, 2007, 11:56 AM

I don't know, but you can see it when installing.
When you get your new mac, do a fresh reinstall, it's easy and you can select what you don't want to install and free up some space. And it took less than 30 minutes!

Rodster · Apr 11, 2007, 03:58 PM

Like Dr. DDS said whenever I do an install I always perform a custom install. I deselect all printer drivers (I use the drivers the came with the system or get them online). That alone saves around 800 meg.

I don't install any additional languages and after the install I run a program called delocalizer which does a search on your computer and deletes any additional language files that made to your hard drive during the install process. (300 meg).

I.1 gigs of useless software eliminated.

LittleBastad · Apr 11, 2007, 04:24 PM

But how difficult is the custom install process? And how much room is there for error? I have a bad (and recent) history of f'ing up my computer when I try to tinker too much.

olePigeon · Apr 11, 2007, 04:40 PM

Originally Posted by LittleBastad

But how difficult is the custom install process? And how much room is there for error? I have a bad (and recent) history of f'ing up my computer when I try to tinker too much.

It's pretty straight forward. You hit the Customize button, and then there's a list of options with check boxes. You can't really mess anything up. Just uncheck whatever languages or printers you may or may not need.

LittleBastad · Apr 11, 2007, 05:05 PM

Originally Posted by olePigeon

It's pretty straight forward. You hit the Customize button, and then there's a list of options with check boxes. You can't really mess anything up. Just uncheck whatever languages or printers you may or may not need.

Will the Customize button be there right when I turn on the machine for the first time, or do I need to insert a CD or DVD?

Please forgive my stupid questions...

Dr. DDS · Apr 11, 2007, 06:29 PM

Here's what you should do:
1) Start your computer holding "option" key (your OSX DVD1 must be in your superdrive)
2) Then will appear 3 options: a) Mac OSX(installed on your HD); b) MacOSX install disk and c) Apple Hardware Test
3) Choose b - MacOSX install
4) You will be asked what kind of instalation you want and you will select the option that erases all your HD and install a fresh OS
5) You will be asked how to format your HD (mac os journaled - thats the default recomended)
6) After formating your HD (is pretty fast) the intalations files will start to run and you will be prompt (sorry, i don't know if i wrote right) in what HD to install (you have only 1 internal HD)
7) Then you can choose what kind of installation you want (there's a button Custom Install)
8) You will select only what you want (you can install only your language, just your printer's drivers...)
9) Enjoy the rest of the instalation
It might seems a lot of steps but it's pretty straight forward like olePigeon said.
if you see apps that you never used before, just don't install it, you can always install it later it you need.
i hope it helps, feel free to send me a private message

Sorry if i wrote something wrong, i'm from brazil, i'm doing my best

Salty · Apr 11, 2007, 10:14 PM

I wouldn't worry about it. 800 Megs on a 250 gig HD is peanuts. Besides if you want afterward you can just go into the library and remove the drivers from there.

CatOne · Apr 11, 2007, 11:42 PM

It's more than 800 megs, though.

By only selecting your printer drivers, by not including "additional languages" and by not including asian fonts, you can save on the order of 4 GB of space. Epson printer drivers are about 700 MB, and Canon printer drivers are like 400 MB, and the asian fonts are about 1 GB. I don't speak wong so I don't need them on my system.

LittleBastad · Apr 12, 2007, 07:34 AM

Thanks for the step-by-step, Dr. DDS. Now that I see it spelled out like that, it doesn't seem like it'd be too hard. But I wish there were a definitive answer on how much space I'd actually be saving. There seems to be some real disagreement on that point.

I still lean towards not doing a custom install because part of the appeal of moving to the Mac for me is best captured in that Mac v. PC commercial where they're both in boxes -- I want to be the Mac for once, up and running in no time, instead of the PC, who takes forever and a day to get going.

Then again, if a custom install really is as simple as Dr. DDS's description makes it sound, maybe it's worth it...

Decisions, decisions. Now, if we could only get the money situation sorted out and go buy the damn thing...

mfbernstein · Apr 12, 2007, 07:48 AM

It'll be very clear how much you're saving when you get to that customize stage of the install. It won't be before, because different Mac systems come with different software packages. My MBP came with ~15GB of junk on it, reduced to 4GB in the installation phase. I doubt you'll see a reduction that big, but think about it: is 5-10GB (potentially) a big enough deal to spend an hour or so going through an install.

Wiskedjak · Apr 12, 2007, 07:56 AM

I cleared out 10gigs of useless stuff (to me) by getting rid of printer drivers, extra languages, Garageband, and most of the templates that I'll never use for Pages, Keynote, iMovie and iDVD.

Large harddrives are not an excuse for bloat.

Dr. DDS · Apr 12, 2007, 03:19 PM

If you have an external HD (FW) you can try to install on it and see how much you can save too

wataru · Apr 14, 2007, 09:17 AM

Originally Posted by CatOne

It's more than 800 megs, though.

By only selecting your printer drivers, by not including "additional languages" and by not including asian fonts, you can save on the order of 4 GB of space. Epson printer drivers are about 700 MB, and Canon printer drivers are like 400 MB, and the asian fonts are about 1 GB. I don't speak wong so I don't need them on my system.

Asian fonts (and fonts for lots of other languages) are still installed, and are in fact required for OS X to run properly (Osaka, for instance). Asian language input methods are also installed no matter what. You actually don't save that much space by not installing the optional fonts.

Visualize · 01:07 PM

My routine when installing OS X is to de-select the languages that I don't speak. So I only select Danish(native) and I then leave English in it's place because I run an English OS. I don't think it's possible to de-select it anyways once the installer is set to be English.

I then de-select the additional printer drivers that OS X wants to install. I only have an HP-Combo-printer. I guess I could de-select that aswell since I install the software that comes with the printer anyways. Food for thought I guess.

All other stuff I install - I have a 250GB harddisk in my Mac and I have still to this day around 170GB available that I think I can fill up but it would take me a while with my downloading habits.

If I would have left my Mac alone when I bought it I would have had a Danish OS X with some ugly startup message like "Starter OS X" - not good. haha.
That's was the only reason why I re-installed apart from the other stuff mentioned earlier. I think now that I could maybe have selected English when the machine first booted when I got it but I didn't want to in fear that some of my OS X would be in my native tongue.

So my advice would be to leave it be and enjoy your Mac even though you may get Garageband loops and whatever installed.

ciao,

brassplayersrock² · Apr 14, 2007, 04:43 PM

i would personally keep the printer drivers because if you happen to get a new printer then you wont have to do the silly insert disk for drivers thing, and b) (i know youre getting an imac, but i have a pb) if you travel around and the place doesnt happen to have your kind of printer and you dont have the right driver for it, then your pretty much SOL unless the place that youre at has the printer drivers

alex

LittleBastad · Apr 18, 2007, 06:51 AM

I think my final decision is to keep everything as is, and not do a custom install (assuming we ever find the money to buy the machine... this process is taking far too long for my liking). Once we finally have a computer in our house again, we're going to have too much to do, and I just don't want to spend time fiddling around with things. I'm just going to get going.