Clean install of 10.3 big speed difference

algol

PowerBook G4 1Ghz 1GB of Ram



I got a 7200rpm harddrive for christmas and I installed it the other day. Took forever to back up my 40GBs of shit, but installing the drive was easy. Anyway, on to the topic of this post.



I had to reinstall 10.3 obviously after upgrading the harddrive. I have noticed speed increases in the following areas.





1. resizing windows dramatically faster (iTunes Resizes almost smooth



2. Games seem to run faster. I get about 5fps more in unreal 03



3. apps open a lot faster... I can open terminal, safari, mail, ichat, sherlock, address book, AppleWorks, and text edit all at the same time in about 5 sec.



4. system boots about 5 seconds faster and shutsdown a few seconds faster.



5. apps quit faster as well





Anyway I just got home and it is 6 o'clock here about and I am tired so excuse all the grammer shit as I don't give a fsck right now lol. I just felt like letting you guys know that installing afresh copy of 10.3 really made a big difference..



Also I am sure the faster drive as something to do with these numbers.

fryke

Wow. Yay. Cool. Can we get back to business-as-usual now? ;-) Seriously: This has been true since Mac OS X Public Beta at the very least. Clean installing helps. However, you can keep your installation good by optimising the system from time to time, checking/repairing your harddrive (use OS X' tools, not anything else!) and repairing permissions.

rok

i do a clean install of my system every 4-6 months. flat out. back up everything. ground up clean, with combo updaters.



overkill? maybe. but i have one fast, stable-as-all-get-out machine.

algol

Yea Rok that maybe a little much lol

hmurchison

I think with a good back up strategy Clean installs twice a year will keep your system in tip top shape. Eventually that's what I'll do to.



Algol thanks for the info. It backs up what we all sort of figure which is getting rid of cruft makes your system reach more of it's potential

1337_5l4xx0r

If you are going to reformat twice a year (waste of time, IMHO), for god's sake partition your drive so that you home is on another partition, so you don't have to back up n GB of data. Just the system should be cleanly installed.

algol

Well the main reason I posted this is I was surprised myself at the speed difference it made. I suspected that the computer would be a little faster; however, I did not think that resizing windows or playing games would be any different. Also, there has been a debate going on between different people on how much of a difference a clean install really does. I wanted to support those who say it makes a reasonable difference to do a clean install. I do not believe in clean installing everything twice a year but maybe whenever a new OS 10 comes out is a good idea. I did not have any trouble to speak of with just the upgrade function, and I did notice speed improvements over 10.2.8 with the plain upgrade. A clean install just brings more power out some how.



I realize this is not the most interesting thread... but I believe it is more important than people give it credit for. Perhaps Apple should work on the upgrade function of the their new versions a little more than they have been.

aquatic

Now would Archive and Install see the same benefits of a complete erase and fresh install? Almost as much?

algol

Archive and install is much better than an upgrade in my experience; however, a clean install does speed things up more. I imagine on a dual G5 one may not be able to tell a difference between the two.

aquatic

Thanks algol if there's really a difference I'm shooting for a clean install in a few days. Just waiting for 10.3.3.

dmband0026

I've gotten into the habit of clean installing once a year. I'm coming up on the next one. I try to do it in January. I did an archive and install when I upgraded to 10.3, so I haven't done one since I got my new HD about 10 months ago. I'm hoping to see a speed increase. 8)

vox barbara

Quote:

Originally posted by rok

i do a clean install of my system every 4-6 months. flat out. ...

sorry to mention, but that sounds so windozeish.



know what? in these classic macos days i never (just repeating: NEVER) performed clean installs after a cert. amount of time. indeed, i never made any kind of clean installs. i just have had an upgrad over an existing system.

the only exception were major upgrades, eg. from 7-->8-->9-->X



Well i did it my way;-)



Thats it.

I never had any kind of serious problem. and know what? i'm the type who always tinker around...



best

mr. me

Quote:

Originally posted by Vox Barbara

sorry to mention, but that sounds so windozeish.



know what? in these classic macos days i never (just repeating: NEVER) performed clean installs after a cert. amount of time. indeed, i never made any kind of clean installs. i just have had an upgrad over an existing system.

the only exception were major upgrades, eg. from 7-->8-->9-->X



Well i did it my way;-)



Thats it.

I never had any kind of serious problem. and know what? i'm the type who always tinker around...



best

I agree. It seems that we have quite a few switchers who bring their Windows mindsets over to the Mac. Reinstalling the OS is the solution for darned near every Windows problem. I have used MacOS X since MacOS X 10.0. I upgraded from MacOS 9 on my older machine. I also bought a new G5 with MacOS X 10.2.7 preinstalled. Every applicable OS upgrade has been applied to both machines. Both now run MacOS X 10.3.2. Between the two machines, I have done one clean install. That was because something went wrong when I upgraded from MacOS 9.0 to MacOS X 10.0 on the older machine. If you are not experiencing a readily identifiable OS problem, then clean installs and the attendant application reinstallations and file restorations are a collossal waste of time. But, if it makes the children happy, ....

aquatic

That is true. However OS X seems to "go bad" after a while. I don't know why specifically. It just doesn't have Classic's resilience because it is so massive in comparison. It is bigger, and better, so also there is more room for cruft. One nice thing would be to see Apple more clearly label, organize, and assign icons to all the system folders, files, prefs, and libraries, but that's a low priority task of polish for say, 10.6, by the time Longhorn comes out. Man will it embarrass Longhorn. It's the little things like this that make Macs, well, Macs.

mr. me

Quote:

Originally posted by Aquatic

That is true. However OS X seems to "go bad" after a while. I don't know why specifically. It just doesn't have Classic's resilience because it is so massive in comparison. It is bigger, and better, so also there is more room for cruft. One nice thing would be to see Apple more clearly label, organize, and assign icons to all the system folders, files, prefs, and libraries, but that's a low priority task of polish for say, 10.6, by the time Longhorn comes out. Man will it embarrass Longhorn. It's the little things like this that make Macs, well, Macs.

My experience is the exact opposite. I find that an initially problematic installation can actually improve over time after several updates. I am convinced that the reason that some users believe that the OS gets less stable is that they apply their own "improvements" by installing various hacks and such like. Currently, I have about 60 GB of commercial, shareware, and freeware apps and files on my main computer. However, I don't hack my system.

algol

Well....



It seems that people think that a clean install is necessary or that it somehow fixes all the problems etc. I have not had any problems that warrented a clean install. I was just pointing out that a doing a clean install on my new drive made the computer a lot faster than i thought it would. Before I thought that the clean install stuff was a bunch of rubbish. However, I don't see any reason that clean installs are necessary or that they need to be done every 4-6 months. That idea is absurd. One reason a clean install helps is probably just that is is like doing a defrag. Something I never do. Extremes are never the right way to go.



I do think apple needs to work on OS 10 more, especially the upgrade function. When 10.4 comes around we will have to see how much of an improvement a clean install does or if apple has gotten the upgrade function to where it should be.

@homenow

Do you defrag your HD's and make sure that all the system maintenance scripts run? If not then it makes sense that a clean install would improve system performance. I run System Optimizer X whenever I notice my system slowing down and that seem to help keep the OS snappy, but since we are putting it to sleep less and less I don't see the slow downs that I did when I put it to sleep every night. I don't have a defrag utility at home, so I've never done that.

t'hain esh kelch

I do a clean install once a year. Every time a 10.x update comes out... OSX is rock solid for me!

jellytussle

Of course, the fact you installed a much faster HDD had nothing to do with it...

algol

yea I did state that the HD would have something to do with it. But I doubt a faster drive would have anything to do with UT03 peformance or window resizing. I understand that a faster drive would only speed up read and write times. I don't think either of these areas have anything to do with it. If the faster drive made the difference and the new install did not apple really should put faster drives in their powerbooks.

tink

I think the faster HD speeds up everything significantly, especially in OSX

and especially going from what was probably a 4200 RPM drive.