? for the Mac users here

[jvencius]

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.

[kwelz]

It works well either way, but honestly I prefer doing fresh installs.

[Left Sig]

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.

[rjacobs]

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.

[m4fun]

Geeze - was thinking this was a misplaced NFA post - oh well...

[chadbag]

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.

You can always clone your old drive to your new drive using CCC (Carbon Copy Cloner). That is usually how I upgrade system drives.

[chadbag]

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.

[bulbvivid]

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.

[jvencius]

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

1) Buy an enclosure for a 2.5" SATA drive

2) Put new HDD in that enclosure--hook up to currently-running MBP and format the new drive

3) Physically swap the HDD's--new one into the MBP, old one into the external enclosure

4) Run a clean install of Snow Leopard onto the new internal drive

5) 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?

[Left Sig]

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.