If I have a new OEM copy of OSX Snow Leopard, is it better to format the hard drive and do a clean install or should I be alright installing it over OSX Tiger than I’m currently running? If it’s better to install on a freshly-formatted HDD I’ll probably just wait to install it for when I upgrade my internal HDD ( AS MENTIONED HERE ) since it would be going on a clean, brand new drive.
It works well either way, but honestly I prefer doing fresh installs.
Install it over Tiger. Do a clean install only if you have a problem with the first install. My current iMac is over 4 years old (2005 model bought in 2006) and I’ve upgraded it several times. Never done a clean install or a reformat.
Macs aren’t PC’s, they don’t need periodic hard drive reformats and reinstalls to stop them from getting slower.
As far as I understand how OSX does the installs, any install is basically a “fresh” install like you would think of doing a full clean and format with windows.
Geeze - was thinking this was a misplaced NFA post - oh well…
You should get three choices
– wipe and fresh install
– archive and fresh install
– upgrade
Either of the last two should be fine in most cases. The archive and fresh install works pretty well unless you have all sorts of custom software that install stuff in the system area or kernel modules etc since it brings over all your settings. The archived system is left on the disk (which is why it is called archive) so you can go find stuff you need to move over manually.
I have had mostly very good luck with plain upgrades as well.
Unless you have a particular reason (lots of cruft from numerous shareware installs or something) just upgrade it. If you have problems after that, do an archive and install. If you want to do a clean install, consider cloning your current drive to an external firewire drive and use Migration Assistant to pull your users and apps to the fresh install (I think MA will use a USB drive, but I’m not positive).
I’ve upgraded lots of Macs over the years and rarely have a problem with it.
You can always clone your old drive to your new drive using CCC (Carbon Copy Cloner). That is usually how I upgrade system drives.
Actually, what I might wind up doing is this:
0.5) Run a full bootable clone of my current internal HDD onto the external (it’s a 250GB Seagate, FWIW…) that I’m using now
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Buy an enclosure for a 2.5" SATA drive
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Put new HDD in that enclosure–hook up to currently-running MBP and format the new drive
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Physically swap the HDD’s–new one into the MBP, old one into the external enclosure
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Run a clean install of Snow Leopard onto the new internal drive
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Connect enclosure with old HDD and run Migration assistant to transfer stuff over–apps, iTunes library, iPhoto library, etc…
I’ve been using my MBP for ~3 years now and am pretty comfortable with it but this’ll be the first time I’ve done something this involved with it–does this sound like a sensible plan?
No it is not a sensible plan. There is no reason to do any of that. Why make your life so difficult?
Just do a full backup beforehand and do an upgrade install. If anything goes wrong than restore from the backup and then do the archive and install
I’ve got three Macs in the house all running Leopard - iMac G4, iBook G4, and iMac G5. They cannot take Snow Leopard because they don’t have Intel processors. All have gone through every new OS revision with upgrade installs with ZERO problems.
The iMac G4 has been through Jaguar, Panther, Tiger, and Leopard. Only problem was having to fool the installer with Leopard because it requires an 867 MHz processor and the old G4 only has an 800 MHz processor. Still works, Apple just made an arbitrary cutoff.
Are you wanting a new drive for a reason? (more space, whatever)? If so, then go ahead. But just get the new drive, put it in your MBP, format it and install SL on it, then put the old one in the enclosure and then use MA to put your stuff on the new one.
If you don’t really need a new drive or want to go the easy route and have a fresh install, just clone to the external, boot from it to make sure it works, then wipe the internal and install SL and then use MA to put the stuff back.
If it were me and I didn’t want a new drive, I would clone to the external (I keep a clone at all times anyway with SuperDuper) to have something to go back to if I needed to, and then I would just upgrade to SL. No point in making it harder than necessary.
I need more hard drive space since the 120GB HDD I’ve got now is filling up rather quickly so I figured on doing the internal HDD and Snow Leopard upgrades at the same time. I’ve got an Intel Mac so even a USB2 external enclosure will be bootable, if not exactly speedy…
Yep–I need the space but since the Western Digital Scorpio Black drive I was checking out on Newegg doesn’t come formatted, I’d have to do that prior to installing, thereby necessitating the enclosure swapping…
???
Just stick it in the machine and when the installer detects it is not formatted it will ask if you want to format it. No enclosure swapping necessary.
Ahhh–I did not know that so that should save some time. So I just swap the drives, power the machine up, and then insert the SL DVD?
That should work.
I’ve never used the migration assistant so I would probably do it slightly differently. I would use CCC to clone your old drive to the new drive, swap, and then upgrade the new drive. But if you want a fresh install without archiving then do what you said.
The only downside to this approach is that you’re going to have to disassemble the laptop in order to gain access to the hard drive. It’s not an extreme challenge but it can be a pain in the ass to get the case to snap back together correctly during reassembly. But if you’re comfortable with that, then I would say go for it. If not, you should be fine with an archive install, just be sure to delete the old system folder afterwards.
Why? I have never had to delete any folder after an archive install? Everything gets moved out of the way so that you still have access to it if you need it to grab stuff.
I work with macs every day and usually do a wipe and install for every major OS upgrade.
Because according to the OP, space is at a premium. As long as you check “Preserve User and Network Settings” during the install, all your personal files will be copied back to the right spot anyway. All that leaves is the old system files which are a waste of space at this point.