I was wondering whether to upgrade or clean install Monterey in my MBA M1.
Is clean install is a total waste of time?
Is clean install is a total waste of time?
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Monterry clean install or upgrade?
- Thread starter Kraizelburg
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Upgrade. This isn't 1998
It's interesting how many people in the MR forums (not just this thread) are voting to do, or asking about how to, erase install/start afresh/clean install etc.
My theory is that a number of them have recently come across to Macs from Windows, where clean installs are more commonplace.
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Possibly. But also, this forum being specifically Mac-nerd-heavy (I count myself in that number!), there is skew toward things like wanting to do a fresh install instead of an upgrade, and asking whether they should go for the 32 or 64GB version of the 16" M1 Max MBP that they intend to use for email and light web browsing
One can do a clean install because he need it... or, wait for it, just because he WANT do that. His time, his machine. His choice.
Operating Systems are not like they were in the 90's. They are all designed to be upgraded. I have upgraded PC's running Linux and even Windows 10/11 and no issues with no loss of data. MacOS is now designed to split the partitions so the OS resides on partition A and Data on partition B.
With Monterey you can now even erase the data partition without affecting the OS partition, much like iOS and iPadOS. I plan on upgrading from macOS 11 to 12.
With Monterey you can now even erase the data partition without affecting the OS partition, much like iOS and iPadOS. I plan on upgrading from macOS 11 to 12.
I was wondering about this as well, since I have previously found it advantageous to clean install in terms of subsequent smooth running, albeit at the expense of some initial lost time. I thought I might do a straight upgrade but keep a bootable copy of Big Sur on hand where I can grab items if needed for a clean install or row back to Big Sur if needed.
I will probably upgrade I just was wondering if clean install is better in terms of not leaving any files or folders behind from previous OS that could affect the overall performance.
I think it really depends on the person, the machine, and the OS upgrading to. I personally like to do a clean install on any major release, 11 to 12 as an example. Other than that, incremental releases are just regular upgrades.
That's my philosophy, for leftover files as well as for girlfriends: NO OVERLAP
Whatever works honestly as I'm sure the servers will be bogged down but clean installs are such a pain so why bother?
I laughed at this xD... because you almost described me lol.Possibly. But also, this forum being specifically Mac-nerd-heavy (I count myself in that number!), there is skew toward things like wanting to do a fresh install instead of an upgrade, and asking whether they should go for the 32 or 64GB version of the 16" M1 Max MBP that they intend to use for email and light web browsing
I prefer to perform a clean install each time to ensure everything goes smooth as silk, but at this point (it is not 2010 anymore) I think it is safe to say updating is the sensible way to go, if you don't have much time to spend. Still, I'd do a clean install every 2 or 3 years, but that's just me.
I think, since Catalina, it is safer to just update, because the data partition and the OS partition are separate volumes, so...
I've just installed Monterey as a straight update and it seems to have gone very smoothly. Early days but it seems a bit smoother running than Big Sur and CPU temperatures appear to be lower on this intel mini.
Upgrade. If you notice issues or think things are off, then do a clean install (or use Monterey's new wipe feature if you have an M1 Mac).
I've thought about doing a clean install when Catalina came out...never did. For sure was going to do it with with Big Sur since I didn't the year before...never did. I've realized doing upgrades work just as good, so doing a clean install isn't worth the extra time and effort for me. This time I'll just be upgrading to Monterey with no intention of doing a clean install, unless something isn't working quite right afterwards but I don't expect that to be the case.
I've thought about doing a clean install when Catalina came out...never did. For sure was going to do it with with Big Sur since I didn't the year before...never did. I've realized doing upgrades work just as good, so doing a clean install isn't worth the extra time and effort for me. This time I'll just be upgrading to Monterey with no intention of doing a clean install, unless something isn't working quite right afterwards but I don't expect that to be the case.
I had some faults that I couldn't fix on my internal Fusion drive, so I elected to do a clean install.
- Went into Recovery Mode and re-built the Fusion drive with the command
Bash:
diskutil resetFusion - Booted off an external drive and installed Monterey 12.0.1 from the freshly-downloaded installer
- Restored all data files and apps.
