You will need to backup your whole user folder. It contains all your preferences and settings and your documents. Back up your main /library folder also. Back up any applications you don't have installers for. Backup any folders you have created out of your home folder that have documents.
But before you go crazy...
If you have a tower just install that new drive and install OSX on that. Plug in the drives later to transfer the data. It will be way faster. The computer will run faster with a new drive anyway.
Once your done create a user with same name and password as the old one, then log in as that user and replace the folders inside your home folder.
Replace the apps that don't have installers for (it's better to reinstall the apps and easier too, if you can)
you can then replace the prefs files from those apps from your old drive into the /library/preferences/ folder.
Reboot and you are usually most of the way there.
Post here if you have any questions.
Oh yeah, you can also use the migration utility in 10.4 to do it even easier during the instal or even after you are done.
Well .... one clean install, several Microsoft User Data corruptions, lost Palm Pilot data, and many hours later amd I believe Tiger is still too slow.
Perhaps it's a Photoshop thing. I notice the beach ball A LOT when going back and forth with Photoshop open.
Still ... my computer HAS NEVER acted this way before - and that's going back to my Performa! Sure previous computers were slower and less memory was available - BUT THE POINT IS that I have never seen such a dramatic DECREASE in performance with a system "UPGRADE".
Oh and yeah, I love these guys who always take the opportunity to say "Well you know a gig of memory really isn't that much for ....." are you kidding me? Whatev!
Tiger sucks! I have no use for dynamic icons, dashboards, and whatever widgets ... I need speed and reliability.
Oh and yeah, I love these guys who always take the opportunity to say "Well you know a gig of memory really isn't that much for ....." are you kidding me? Whatev!
Why? 1GB isn't much - not for Photoshop or any other Adobe app. Beachballing when going to and from an app is one of the signs of paging.
If you don't even want to bother checking /var/vm/ then it's your own fault.
Oh and yeah, I love these guys who always take the opportunity to say "Well you know a gig of memory really isn't that much for ....." are you kidding me? Whatev!
1 GB is a fairly normal configuration these days, hardly even mid-end.
A clean install is hardly ever necessary. You guys are talking like a bunch of winblows users although it is certainly less painful to clean install os x anyway.
[/QUOTE
Hey again, same idea, same mindset, i guess.
This advice to reinstall just gives me the creeps. It is almost always
not necessary, except one encounter some really bad system errors,
which is very rare and unlikely, imh experience.
Performance and so called snappiness is such a personal
thing. Maybe the original poster saw a brand new Mac in action and
from now on he considers his (aging) Mac as slow.
It has a lot to do with (wrong) expectations. I think, that's the key here.
Let's face it a G4 (even a 2x1gHz) is not exactly a speed demon, it is quite
a reliable working horse, which is stable and easy to maintain.
How can all be well before a system upgrade - then all go "South" after a system upgrade and it is MY FAULT?!
I'm not saying that it is a RAM problem, but why don't you want to check? That's what I meant about it being your own fault.
All it takes is opening Terminal and typing: ls /var/vm/ when your machine gets slow, and if there are more than two swapfiles, you need more RAM.
Try to solve the problem instead of complaining about people trying to help you solve it.
Have you updated your apps after the upgrade to Tiger? Perhaps newer versions require more RAM. Are they the latest versions? Perhaps older versions leak when running under Tiger. Have you checked how much RAM you have allocated to Photoshop? Perhaps you had a lower setting in 10.3. Are you working on larger projects than before?
Did you copy over the caches too when you redid the drive? (Because that would be bad, if caches were the problem in the first place.)
It's not your fault that it is slow - it's your fault that you jumped immediately to "reinstall the world" instead of trying to figure out what actually went wrong, despite advice in here. Chances are extremely good that a simple fix was all it needed.
All it takes is opening Terminal and typing: ls /var/vm/ when your machine gets slow, and if there are more than two swapfiles, you need more RAM.
What kind of "rule of thumb" is that supposed to be? The amount of swapfiles doesn't even say anything about the size of them, nor is it anywhere close to the real VM size.
The only remotely useful gauge of "do I need more RAM" is the rate at which pageouts occur.
What kind of "rule of thumb" is that supposed to be? The amount of swapfiles doesn't even say anything about the size of them, nor is it anywhere close to the real VM size.
Did I say that? No!
But does the system create swapfiles when there is enough memory? (with the exception of the first one).
What does the system usually do when the disk is thrashing?
All I know is that a couple of system versions ago with the same hardware - same ram, my apps ran smooth ... no beachballing, no hanging between apps, no web browser stalls. Now, new system and all else the same and problems ensue ...
Seems pretty straight forward to me. But, I guess that's too simplistic a view.
If the new system requires more and more ram to do what previous versions did with less ram, or for that matter any other aspect of the "thought process" within the computer .. then that makes my point.
The new system is less efficient.
Having to upgrade ram to run newer, "bulkier", "greedier" systems undermines the "upgrade".
I'll check the ram ... but you know if my car runs fine on gasoline, and then I put water in the tank and the car ceases to function - it's the water - not the engine that is the culprit.
I don't know about that swap file "rule of thumb" - I have several swap files and my computer is plenty fast at all times.
How full is your primary hard drive? My daughter's computer really slowed down when she got near filling up her drive.
Good point. I would run disk utility-repair disk from the startup disk and check to make sure your hard drive is good. My brother PB started to run really slow all of a sudden and a few days later the hard drive crashed. Just a thought....
Comments
You will need to backup your whole user folder. It contains all your preferences and settings and your documents. Back up your main /library folder also. Back up any applications you don't have installers for. Backup any folders you have created out of your home folder that have documents.
But before you go crazy...
If you have a tower just install that new drive and install OSX on that. Plug in the drives later to transfer the data. It will be way faster. The computer will run faster with a new drive anyway.
Once your done create a user with same name and password as the old one, then log in as that user and replace the folders inside your home folder.
Replace the apps that don't have installers for (it's better to reinstall the apps and easier too, if you can)
you can then replace the prefs files from those apps from your old drive into the /library/preferences/ folder.
Reboot and you are usually most of the way there.
Post here if you have any questions.
Oh yeah, you can also use the migration utility in 10.4 to do it even easier during the instal or even after you are done.
Perhaps it's a Photoshop thing. I notice the beach ball A LOT when going back and forth with Photoshop open.
Still ... my computer HAS NEVER acted this way before - and that's going back to my Performa! Sure previous computers were slower and less memory was available - BUT THE POINT IS that I have never seen such a dramatic DECREASE in performance with a system "UPGRADE".
Oh and yeah, I love these guys who always take the opportunity to say "Well you know a gig of memory really isn't that much for ....." are you kidding me? Whatev!
Tiger sucks! I have no use for dynamic icons, dashboards, and whatever widgets ... I need speed and reliability.
Oh and yeah, I love these guys who always take the opportunity to say "Well you know a gig of memory really isn't that much for ....." are you kidding me? Whatev!
Why? 1GB isn't much - not for Photoshop or any other Adobe app. Beachballing when going to and from an app is one of the signs of paging.
If you don't even want to bother checking /var/vm/ then it's your own fault.
Oh and yeah, I love these guys who always take the opportunity to say "Well you know a gig of memory really isn't that much for ....." are you kidding me? Whatev!
1 GB is a fairly normal configuration these days, hardly even mid-end.
Why? 1GB isn't much - not for Photoshop or any other Adobe app. Beachballing when going to and from an app is one of the signs of paging.
If you don't even want to bother checking /var/vm/ then it's your own fault.
This is MY FAULT ... that's classic!
How can all be well before a system upgrade - then all go "South" after a system upgrade and it is MY FAULT?!
A clean install is hardly ever necessary. You guys are talking like a bunch of winblows users
[/QUOTE
Hey again, same idea, same mindset, i guess.
This advice to reinstall just gives me the creeps. It is almost always
not necessary, except one encounter some really bad system errors,
which is very rare and unlikely, imh experience.
Performance and so called snappiness is such a personal
thing. Maybe the original poster saw a brand new Mac in action and
from now on he considers his (aging) Mac as slow.
It has a lot to do with (wrong) expectations. I think, that's the key here.
Let's face it a G4 (even a 2x1gHz) is not exactly a speed demon, it is quite
a reliable working horse, which is stable and easy to maintain.
This is MY FAULT ... that's classic!
How can all be well before a system upgrade - then all go "South" after a system upgrade and it is MY FAULT?!
I'm not saying that it is a RAM problem, but why don't you want to check? That's what I meant about it being your own fault.
All it takes is opening Terminal and typing: ls /var/vm/ when your machine gets slow, and if there are more than two swapfiles, you need more RAM.
Try to solve the problem instead of complaining about people trying to help you solve it.
Have you updated your apps after the upgrade to Tiger? Perhaps newer versions require more RAM. Are they the latest versions? Perhaps older versions leak when running under Tiger. Have you checked how much RAM you have allocated to Photoshop? Perhaps you had a lower setting in 10.3. Are you working on larger projects than before?
It's not your fault that it is slow - it's your fault that you jumped immediately to "reinstall the world" instead of trying to figure out what actually went wrong, despite advice in here. Chances are extremely good that a simple fix was all it needed.
All it takes is opening Terminal and typing: ls /var/vm/ when your machine gets slow, and if there are more than two swapfiles, you need more RAM.
What kind of "rule of thumb" is that supposed to be? The amount of swapfiles doesn't even say anything about the size of them, nor is it anywhere close to the real VM size.
The only remotely useful gauge of "do I need more RAM" is the rate at which pageouts occur.
This is MY FAULT ... that's classic!
How can all be well before a system upgrade - then all go "South" after a system upgrade and it is MY FAULT?!
Let's do a little clean-up. Boot into single-user mode (hold cmd-S), then type:
fsck -fy
mount -rw /
rm -rf /System/Library/Caches/*
rm -rf /Library/Caches/*
rm -rf /Users/<you>/Library/Caches/*
reboot
(Where "<you>" is the short name of your user account.)
Your system will boot rather slowly at first as caches get recreated. After this, you system should feel quite a bit faster.
What kind of "rule of thumb" is that supposed to be? The amount of swapfiles doesn't even say anything about the size of them, nor is it anywhere close to the real VM size.
Did I say that? No!
But does the system create swapfiles when there is enough memory? (with the exception of the first one).
What does the system usually do when the disk is thrashing?
All I know is that a couple of system versions ago with the same hardware - same ram, my apps ran smooth ... no beachballing, no hanging between apps, no web browser stalls. Now, new system and all else the same and problems ensue ...
Seems pretty straight forward to me. But, I guess that's too simplistic a view.
If the new system requires more and more ram to do what previous versions did with less ram, or for that matter any other aspect of the "thought process" within the computer .. then that makes my point.
The new system is less efficient.
Having to upgrade ram to run newer, "bulkier", "greedier" systems undermines the "upgrade".
I'll check the ram ... but you know if my car runs fine on gasoline, and then I put water in the tank and the car ceases to function - it's the water - not the engine that is the culprit.
Photoshop can eat a lot of RAM.
In my experience Tiger doesn't need more RAM than Jaguar but it's been a while since I only had 1GB.
Did I say that? No!
But does the system create swapfiles when there is enough memory?
You've gotta have an awful lot of RAM to avoid swapping altogether. In which case you might as well turn off dynamic_pager and gain some performance.
vm_stat
in Terminal.
Look for the pageouts. Ignore the pageins.
Or fire up Activity Monitor and click the "System Memory" tab. Look at "Page Ins/Outs". Ignore the "Ins".
You've gotta have an awful lot of RAM to avoid swapping altogether.
There is always one 64MB swapfile and often two.
How full is your primary hard drive? My daughter's computer really slowed down when she got near filling up her drive.
I don't know about that swap file "rule of thumb" - I have several swap files and my computer is plenty fast at all times.
How full is your primary hard drive? My daughter's computer really slowed down when she got near filling up her drive.
Good point. I would run disk utility-repair disk from the startup disk and check to make sure your hard drive is good. My brother PB started to run really slow all of a sudden and a few days later the hard drive crashed. Just a thought....
Try Onyx http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/20070, a pretty damn good - and free - tool for cleaning just about every cache on your computer. It also performs some maintenance and optimisation routines.
See post #15.