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Laplace · Aug 12, 2005, 10:46 PM

Hi all, I'm a PC user and soon to be Mac-convert, and I was thinking about reformatting and reinstalling OS X on a Mac. I know in the Windows world, I pretty much reformat every year and do a fresh install of XP. Is this recommended/needed in OS X?

I was also wondering when I buy a new Mac, will it come with a full version of OS X with CD? Or do they do things similar to PC vendors and give you a "backup" copy of XP which really isn't a full version. Also, when you buy your new Mac, can you use the copy of OS X that comes with it on other Mac machines of yours? Or is it a one use only copy?

Laplace

Mr. Blur · Aug 13, 2005, 12:22 AM

the license for os x that comes with any mac purchase is for one computer only - you are not entitled to install it it wherever you please.

in general it is not necessary to reinstall mac os all the time. again, in general, a lot of people "clean" install their system only with the major upgrades (eg: 10.3 -> 10.4)...and apple gives the option for this which leaves your apps and user accounts intact - it basically renames your old system "previous system" and creates a new one, giving you the option to retrieve files from the old system if required.

ShotgunEd · Aug 13, 2005, 08:13 AM

Like Mr Blur said its always a pretty good idea to erase and install when doing major upgrades, but other than that, there's no need.

The dvds that'll come with your computer will be tied to that computer, and will likely refuse to install on other macs, but they are full OS installs, Developer Tools and Applications that come bundled.

TheSpaz · Aug 13, 2005, 09:40 AM

Originally Posted by ShotgunEd

Like Mr Blur said its always a pretty good idea to erase and install when doing major upgrades, but other than that, there's no need.

The dvds that'll come with your computer will be tied to that computer, and will likely refuse to install on other macs, but they are full OS installs, Developer Tools and Applications that come bundled.

Correction. You should NOT have to erase and install for an OS upgrade, that's stupid. It's an UPGRADE for a reason... and by the way... I think upgrading is actually better for the computer cause I think it does something to the previous files so they are more compatible with Tiger. For example, when I did an erase and install... I restored my old user prefs and then my computer was all screwed up. On the other hand... when I did a plain upgrade and kept my user folder and prefs intact, I had no problems at all... it was like night and day.... and it also saved me the hassle of backing up my data and restoring everything.

I'll always upgrade for now on... I think the installer fixes your old files for you while it's installing to make them more compatible with the new OS. But, don't quote me on that, that's just my opinion.

wtmcgee · Aug 13, 2005, 09:51 AM

Archive and Install is the best solution by far.

It deletes your system folder and keeps everything else in tact, then reinstalls your system folder. This way you get a clean OS install but don't have to reinstall apps, or set up new prefs.

ghporter · Aug 13, 2005, 09:57 AM

MacOS does not work like Windows, and it does not lose little bits and pieces of data (usually in the Registry) over time. You don't need to regularly reinstall MacOS for maintenance purposes as some people believe you must for Windows. However, reinstalling Windows periodically isn't necessary either-there are maintenance tasks you can do instead that are faster and do basically the same thing, such as using a "registry cleaner" utility, fully defragmenting the drive and so on. But MacOS doesn't use the same design philosophy, doesn't get all chopped up and disconnected, and thus doesn't need that kind of maintenance.

ShotgunEd · Aug 15, 2005, 07:19 AM

Originally Posted by TheSpaz

Correction. You should NOT have to erase and install for an OS upgrade, that's stupid. It's an UPGRADE for a reason... and by the way... I think upgrading is actually better for the computer cause I think it does something to the previous files so they are more compatible with Tiger. For example, when I did an erase and install... I restored my old user prefs and then my computer was all screwed up. On the other hand... when I did a plain upgrade and kept my user folder and prefs intact, I had no problems at all... it was like night and day.... and it also saved me the hassle of backing up my data and restoring everything.

I'll always upgrade for now on... I think the installer fixes your old files for you while it's installing to make them more compatible with the new OS. But, don't quote me on that, that's just my opinion.

You shouldn't HAVE to, but tell that to the people who upgraded and had flakey installs. I could point you to the numerous tig bug/support threads.

In my experience, a clean install has far fewer problems.

But its just my opinion.

JMII · Aug 15, 2005, 11:08 AM

Originally Posted by wtmcgee

Archive and Install is the best solution by far.

Agreed, I've done this from Jag 10.2 to Panther 10.3 and now on Tiger 10.4 with my MDD G4. Never had a problem that required a complete wipe and install.

Now if I was buying a used Mac I'd do erase and install just because you have no idea what the previous owner did with the machine.

New Macs come with a full OSX install DVD (plus iLife!), but that disk only (in most cases) installs/restores to the original machine since it's hardware specific IE: a PowerMac G5 disk will only install OSX onto another PowerMac G5, thus you can't use that disk to install OSX onto a PowerBook or iMac (it would be illegal anyway).

CharlesS · Aug 16, 2005, 01:40 AM

There's really no reason to have to reformat the drive unless the drive structures themselves are seriously hosed.

99.99% of the time, a plain old install will work fine. And if the OS does manage to get corrupted somehow, which happens extremely rarely compared to Windows, the Archive and Install feature will do a completely clean install without having to reformat or lose any of your data.

ShotgunEd · Aug 16, 2005, 05:31 AM

As someone who doesn't really backup as frequently as I should, Erase and Install forces me to backup. I had a bad experience upgrading to jaguar where I was getting kernel panics on reboot after an upgrade. It took a lot of messing about in the terminal to get my data (some old os9 docs with resource forks so a simple copy didn't work) off the drive via target disk mode.

I pledged from then on that a backup and erase and install would be the best thing for me, as a) I wouldn't lose any data if the process went tits up, and b) I can choose to migrate the prefs and prefpanes that I want, or update them at the same time.

Granted, if you do daily backups, you don't need to erase and install, but that one time that you forget to backup before you do an upgrade that hoses your mac, you'll wish you had used ccc and erased and installed.

CharlesS · Aug 16, 2005, 06:07 AM

Originally Posted by ShotgunEd

As someone who doesn't really backup as frequently as I should, Erase and Install forces me to backup. I had a bad experience upgrading to jaguar where I was getting kernel panics on reboot after an upgrade. It took a lot of messing about in the terminal to get my data (some old os9 docs with resource forks so a simple copy didn't work) off the drive via target disk mode.

I pledged from then on that a backup and erase and install would be the best thing for me, as a) I wouldn't lose any data if the process went tits up, and b) I can choose to migrate the prefs and prefpanes that I want, or update them at the same time.

Granted, if you do daily backups, you don't need to erase and install, but that one time that you forget to backup before you do an upgrade that hoses your mac, you'll wish you had used ccc and erased and installed.

Again, if you do an Archive and Install it gets you a system that is just as clean as one you installed via erase and install, unless the hard disk is damaged. While you should back up your data, if you had done an Archive and Install, you would in all likelihood have been able to get your data back without using Target Disk Mode.

TheSpaz · Aug 16, 2005, 08:59 AM

The last time I did an Archive and Install... my preferences were all screwed up... So it was like starting over anyways... and I had to fight with permissions and all that fun stuff...

But, on the other hand, when I did a plain old upgrade... everything was exactly how I left it except for the OS version had changed to 10.4 obviously. I used to always do an Erase and install or Archive and install and I thought "Why am I doing all this work? This is a Mac, and I know Apple wouldn't make us have to do this", so I just upgraded and I was surprised how much fewer problems I had and I didn't have to waste any time trying to figure out how to get my old settings back and stuff.

To each his/her own though. If you feel better doing an Archive and install... then go for it but, you better hope you don't have to move previous Home libraries around cause it will cause havock. I would do a simple upgrade if Panther was running fine.

Millennium · Aug 16, 2005, 09:04 AM

Clean installs, while not quite at the level of voodoo, are pretty close. You shouldn't ever need to do this, unless you don't have enough disk space for an Archive/Install or if you need to reformat the disk for some other reason anyway.

For most people, however, plain upgrades work just fine. I have two Macs, and I usually Archive/Install on one and Upgrade on the other so that I can compare the results. So far, most of the so-called performance boosts that people claim to get from Archive/Install seem to be nothing but a placebo effect.