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Fresh install of SL or leave as is on new 27" iMac?

mgzilla

mgzilla

macrumors member
Original poster
Sep 28, 2009
56
0
New Jersey
So, my i7 should be here Monday (should've been here Friday but that's another story) and I've been hearing a lot of posters saying that they were immediately doing a reinstall of Snow Leopard when they received their machine. What are the benefits of this, and is it worth it?

Thanks.
 
mgzilla said:
So, my i7 should be here Monday (should've been here Friday but that's another story) and I've been hearing a lot of posters saying that they were immediately doing a reinstall of Snow Leopard when they received their machine. What are the benefits of this, and is it worth it?

Thanks.
Click to expand...

I'm planning on it when I get mine.
That way I'll always be sure there's nothing loaded on there I don't know about or want.
Besides I'll use the oppertunity to leave out all the printer drivers and extra languages and save a few GB while i'm at it.
There's been a few posters who have reported a boot time of 1:30 going down to 30 seconds after reloading the OS.
And when the computer is still empty is the best time to do it!
 
The first thing I will do when mine gets here on Tuesday is a fresh install.
 
I don't think it's a necessity, but its not going to hurt doing it straight away. Much better to do it now then wait until a later date and have to worry about cloning your hard drive etc.
 
OK, sounds like I definitely want to do a fresh install.

Is there anything special I have to do, or is it as easy as just popping the SL disk in?
 
mgzilla said:
is it as easy as just popping the SL disk in?
Click to expand...


Pretty much. Pop in the disc that comes with your computer, restart and hold down the "c" key to boot from disc and follow along. I also always do a personal fresh install as soon as I get most any new computers.
 
After you have booted up from the disc, dont forget to go into Disc Utility and reformat the drive before you install.
 
The software on the reinstall discs is the same as that installed on the computer. A reinstall is not required and simply puts the same bytes back onto the disk. The issue with slow boot can usually be fixed by explicitly setting the boot disk to the HD.

I suspect, but do not know, that the slow boot is due to the machine looking at the SD slot for a boot volume.
 
I erased the hard drive and reinstalled and it boots a lot faster now.
However, swiping on the Magic Mouse was not working afterward even though the factory disc is 10.6.2 and after install it had the Magic Mouse icon in System Preferences. I decided to reinstall the Magic Mouse update and it fixed the problem. Also, swiping was working before I decided to reinstall.

Also my screen flashed twice before I decided to reinstall. I'm not sure what caused it, but the screen went blank for about 2 seconds at different times. After I reinstalled it has not happened yet, and it has been on a lot longer since before the reinstall.

Things are working great now, and have been for over 48 hours.
 
nOw2 said:
The software on the reinstall discs is the same as that installed on the computer. A reinstall is not required and simply puts the same bytes back onto the disk. The issue with slow boot can usually be fixed by explicitly setting the boot disk to the HD.
Click to expand...

100% right.

it's not a PC which comes with crap. Its Mac OS and iLife. No norton or Sony vaio survey trash that comes up:mad:

The only thing i'd imagine one could gain is some HD space when manually de-selecting some printer drivers or so. But that does not make the machine faster.

When my comes and boots slow i check the startup disk and thats it. No fresh re-install.
:)
 
No fresh install here and I've been running for two days without nary an issue. I have transeferred all of my data, installed new applications, including Parallels 5 and Windows 7. i7 is running like a dream :)
 
nicroma said:
I erased the hard drive and reinstalled and it boots a lot faster now.
However, swiping on the Magic Mouse was not working afterward even though the factory disc is 10.6.2 and after install it had the Magic Mouse icon in System Preferences. I decided to reinstall the Magic Mouse update and it fixed the problem. Also, swiping was working before I decided to reinstall.
Click to expand...

Sounds like the install from the factory is a more recent version of 10.6.2 than on the included disc.
 
I did a clean install once I got my 27" because I didn't want any of the language translations and I've just always done this with every new Mac I've purchased in the past so I guess sort of a standard practice for me.

I wasn't aware of the selecting the hard drive again as the boot drive to remedy the slow boot -- mine did have that when I first turned it on and when I shut it off to install my upgraded RAM I booted it back on to the install DVD and reinstalled and after that I have 21 second boots.
 
nOw2 said:
The software on the reinstall discs is the same as that installed on the computer. A reinstall is not required and simply puts the same bytes back onto the disk. The issue with slow boot can usually be fixed by explicitly setting the boot disk to the HD.

I suspect, but do not know, that the slow boot is due to the machine looking at the SD slot for a boot volume.
Click to expand...

I always perform a fresh install as I am anal retentive enough to enjoy a placebo effect.

Honestly, with Snow Leopard, I don't think its as critical as it once was. Printer drivers and languages are handled differently and what's 3GB savings on 1000GB drive?!
 
There is no point in doing a "fresh" install on a brand new computer, whats installed from the disc is exactly the same as whats already on the hard drive.
 
So one has to first go into disk utility and erase the HD? Which one is erased? The top one or the 'macintosh hd' one?

Then put the disk in and restart holding the C key?

Is all that correct?

EDIT: Then load up disk 2 (applications) and install that?
 
This is a remnant of the bad old days with pc's. I would routinely reinstall Windows on a new machine to get rid of the garbage that would inevitably be installed on there. One time, I had a new pc come with a virus fresh from the factory. Fun stuff.

These were also the days when a fresh reinstall of Windows was invariably necessary every couple of years. Ugh.

In my personal experience, OS reinstall isn't really necessary with Apple.
 
harleygold said:
i don't see the point in a fresh install, especially when you have 1T of mem. :confused:
Click to expand...

I questioned this too. I timed my iMac when I first booted it up and it didn't take too long to load. I was actually content that it booted up smoothly and is working fine.
 
Slightly of post I know, but, granted that a fresh install on a new iMac is not necessary is it possible to partition the HD without affecting the boot partition.
I am getting an i5 with a 2tb disc and want to partition this huge volume for various uses.
 
300D said:
There is no point in doing a "fresh" install on a brand new computer, whats installed from the disc is exactly the same as whats already on the hard drive.
Click to expand...

Unless you are doing a destructive partitioning of the drive that requires a HD wipe, yep no reason.
 
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