What would you be doing? Clean Install or Upgrade?

[Abba1]

If Yosemite is preferable: backup, then simply upgrade.

Benefits, if any, from a clean installation may be short-lived and/or negligible.

Background

I agree. I would backup and then upgrade unless I have a lot of crud to clear out. I have done both and an upgrade certainly is easier. I've also done a full install rather than an simple upgrade or a clean install. That turned out to create problems it shouldn't have created; and, then I had to do a clean install. In any case, there have been times when I wanted or needed a clean install. It all depends on circumstances.

When I do a clean install, I do not use Migration Assistant to restore data as I am then bringing back the crud I wanted to get rid of in the first place. Rather, I just drag over the specific applications (e.g. Aperture) and any data (e.g. Documents, Spreadsheets, etc.) I want to retain from either TM or my other backup. One advantage to this method of restoring data is that it does not take very long to do; and, another is that you can pick and choose what you want to restore.

In any case, since I did a clean install recently, I will most likely upgrade when the next upgrade comes out.

 

[hellfried]

Time to migrate

Just did a clean install of the latest version of Yosemite on my late 2012 iMac. I opted to use Migration Assistant to restore all my apps and files from a time machine backup but now the progress is stuck at 57 minutes for the past 2 hours. I think I have close to 350 GB of data to transfer. I started at around 11.30 pm last night and its now abut 10 hours later. How long does it usually take? My time machine backup is located on an ext. hard drive with USB 3.0 capabilities.