The best upgrade path for a bloated, sluggish, old system

[JES]

Hi There,

I use my laptop for work and audio production (and some video), as well as entertainment. Currently on 10.8.6, but planning to upgrade to Yosemite. I'm on a 2011 Macbook pro 17" with OWC data doubler, and I just bought a brand new SSD and HDD so I'll have 3GB of storage in the computer.

Even though I currently boot off a (smaller) SSD, 10.8.6 is running sluggishly, especially the Apple apps (mail and safari are very slow to launch on startup, lots of spinning pizzas). I've done the usual troubleshooting.

I am thinking of a totally clean reinstall of everything--all applications and the OS. That will take a long time. But it's do-able. If I do that, and move user data over (archived email, safari bookmarks, files, etc) should that solve the problem? Is there a less radical solution that's likely to work?

Thanks.

--JES

 

[ApolloBoy]

Have you tried upgrading your RAM yet? That also helps in addition to an SSD.

 

[JES]

Thanks. I've got 8GB RAM already and since I run 32 bit, I can't imagine more would help.

 

[crashoverride77]

Thanks. I've got 8GB RAM already and since I run 32 bit, I can't imagine more would help.

Yeah 8gb should be fine especially when you have Mavericks or Yosemite which uses memory compression.
The sluggishness also might come from the fact that you run lion, which is meh.
Try a clean install like you said and see what happens. If Yosemite doesn't run to your liking than try Mavericks. Should be alright.

 

[Partron22]

and move user data over...

Not Migration Assistant? For me, MA always brings over piles of old plists, Launch Daemons etc.; stuff from Apps I uninstalled in 2011 and the like.
If you want clean and fast, total manual reinstall seems the way to fly. It is a lot of work, so back up an image once you're done.

 

[MikhailT]

You'll want to do a clean install and manually copy the data files over, do not use any tools to bring files in automatically.

It is not a sure thing that your issue will be fixed by this move but you will remove a lot of variables in the process.

When you do a clean install, make sure to also make a clone backup, so that you can easily and quickly restore to this image later. This will save you a lot of time. Make a second image when you're happy with everything moved in.