Comments on: Install vs Archive & Install: Performance Testing

By: PreobrajenskySuka2

PreobrajenskySuka2 — Mon, 07 May 2007 23:16:39 +0000

Hallo, but topic starter, [b]you are sure?[/b]
prof.Preobrajensky.
Bye

By: Michael DiSefano

Michael DiSefano — Sat, 24 Feb 2007 15:11:46 +0000

joecab,

I completely agree with what you said. That’s the primary reason I like doing a clean install. I tend to install a lot of applications and make a lot of system changes and doing a clean install allows me forces me to re-evaluate what I really need.

Also, the geeky weekend thing is for me too :-P

By: joecab

joecab — Sat, 24 Feb 2007 00:35:53 +0000

Darn sorry it didn’t work. :( I had the same problem and that’s what did the trick for me. I wonder if getting your hands on some other disk utility like TechTools would do anything?

By: Chris

Chris — Sat, 24 Feb 2007 00:29:08 +0000

joecab:

Thanks, but I’ve tried that. I guess my only solution now is a clean install and for that I’m going to wait for Leopard.

By: joecab

joecab — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 20:43:47 +0000

Chris, I may have the solution to your problem:

You need to use Apple’s Disk Utility to repair your hard drive. I don’t mean repair the permissions, but the drive itself, and to do that you need to boot Disk Utility from another drive or your install DVD. You’ll know you have it working if you see the epair Disk button selectable rather than ghosted out.

By: joecab

joecab — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 20:31:49 +0000

Clean install, definitely. Besides it forces you to sit down and get rid of a lot of accumulated junk from stuff once tried out but not kept. It’s an interesting but incredibly geeky way to kill part of a weekend. Painful, too, when I finally had to wave bye-bye to all my old OS 9 apps once I switched up to an Intel. :(

By: Kris Jones

Kris Jones — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 15:57:43 +0000

As ‘weldon’ notes above, the options for upgrading to Tiger were “upgrade”, “archive and install” (with an option to preserve user accounts and settings) and “erase and install”. I did read advice somewhere that an “archive and install” had the advantage over “upgrade” because it replaced the whole system folder. With “upgrade” some of the “LaunchDaemons” from Panther remained, even though they had been deprecated.

As “archive and install” replaces everything in the system folder (and in the case of earlier versions of OSX to Tiger, changed the kernel), so I can see that it has an advantage over “upgrade”. However, I’m not sure there is much to be gained from doing an “erase and install” instead. I guess it’s possible that you might lose some of the defunct files on your machine. For example, my machine has carried reference to a Speedtouch modem in System Preferences/Network, which I abandoned using back in 2003. Getting rid of it would have required finding and editing the appropriate network .plist files. A clean install, forced upon me by a corrupted disk, finally got rid of it. It also freed up some more space, probably because I had other preference files etc, for applications I no longer use, littering my disk. If I balance that small advantage against the time and effort spent reloading and updating applications, and recovering data from my backup, I come down firmly on the side of “archive and install”.

By: rahrens

rahrens — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 12:27:23 +0000

One has to be careful, as mentioned already, one can bring old issues with you.

I recently reinstalled Tiger onto my DPP 1gig MDD PowerMac, and used Migration Manager to bring all my old stuff from the old disk into the new install.

My old install had an issue with sleep – it wouldn’t go to sleep at all, and I couldn’t find out why. So I figured the new install would solve the issue.

After the clean install on the new disk, that system went to sleep fine.

After the migration, which included all old apps, the sleep problem came back!

After much more experimentation, I found that a preferences file for Finder had been brought over from the old install that was the culprit. After trashing that file, my sleep issue went away, and it works fine.

So even a clean install can end up with old issues when using the Migration Manager!

By: Iestyn Lloyd

Iestyn Lloyd — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 11:32:28 +0000

To Nathaniel.
Would this work for all programmes like Mail, Address Book & iCal as I don’t want to lose any information or the folders I’ve created in Mail. And what about drivers for my Wacom Tablet and such stuff.
If everything I need is stored on ~/library/preferences & ~/library/application support and that you can just drag the Applications folder in without re-instaling everything, I will definitely be going for a clean install and copying the folders over from my backup drive.

By: Chris

Chris — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 10:16:06 +0000

I could never get Archive & Install to work on my MacBook :(

http://img132.imageshack.us/img132/3911/sn370105sk8.jpg

Anyone have any advice for me? I really need to A&I, too.