RESET THE iMAC

[Ameer Azari]

hey guys,

The time has come for me to wipe my iMac clean.

I have backed up all my files on two separate hard drives and my old iMac, so can anyone advise me on the best way to go about formatting the old dog?

I'm planning on re-installing FCP 2 and Adobe CS4 Production suite on it.

It's a 24" Intel iMac.

cheers,

Ameer

[Ameer Azari]

Also, I don't want to go through the coffufal of re-installing leopard so what path should I take to keep the OS installed?

[David Gray]

Just format it, only takes about an hour to install OS X. That's the only way you'll get a totally clean install.

[J Davis]

Why are you doing a overall wipe? Generally curious as its not necessary for the installation of FCS2 or CS4 and will not speed up the computer in any way.

OSX (on motorola or intel) is a very self-sufficient, self-cleaning operating system. The only thing that a OSX reinstall will do that you can't do otherwise is to reset the computers name.

Often a first time mac user who is coming from a PC background will have habits like fresh re-installs etc. Or booting the machine down and back up again every time they finish for the day instead of sending it to sleep. I only mention this on the chance that you are in this situation.

I've owned 4 macs and since they switched to OSX several years ago I have never needed to reinstall the OSX or wipe a drive. In fact I usually just send the computer to sleep at the end of every work shift and give it a restart once a month. This covers me despite my heavy use of FCP, Color, STP, Compressor, Photoshop and occaisonal use of Shake, Motion or AE.

Oh boy ... I feel myself going on a huge ramble here, must be the coffee.

[David Gray]

A little of topic but a top tip if your using After Effects and you wana purge your ram clean of all that AE rendering hit cmd-opt + / (I think it might have to be the one on the number pad).

[J Davis]

Gravy you reminded me of something, and I have been inaccurate in my last post


This covers me despite my heavy use

No not completely – there are some other tricks I pull that I had neglected to mention. Sometimes I'll get a crash during some vfx work with color, shake or AE then afterwards I find its good to wipe the P-RAM (parameter ram) aka NVRAM which I do by restarting and holding down four keys
COMMAND, OPTION, P and R

Every so often I rebuild the file allocation table and directory structures of my boot drive. This is very useful when working regularly with NLE's like FCP or premier because they regularly link to and change many, many files. To do this I resart and hold down the shift key. This starts the machine in safe boot mode with extensions turned off. This safe boot process takes much longer because of the F.A.T. and directory rebuilding process. Just make sure you remember to restart again with a normal boot.

Finally, I also regulary repair disk permissions which often get screwy. To do this, use the Disk Utility application in the Utilities folder, select the drive and press the button that says Repair Permissions.

Maybe the original poster/Ameer already knew all this but I thought its worth mentioning in case others don't.

[holy_handgrenade]

I'd have to agree, no reason to format/reinstall your OS for cleanlieness on a Mac. Windows users have to do this only due to "winrot" which is basically the term used for corrupted or bloated registry that is largely bloated due to orphaned registry keys. Even then, unless you have a corrupted registry, a little patience (heavy understatement) and some time in RegEdit can solve that, but it's usually faster to format/reinstall.

OSX doesn't have this issue. If you want to remove apps, remove them, clean your data up, while it might be faster to format/reinstall you wont see any benefit to doing so.

[Ameer Azari]

Hi guys, sorry, I've been in Wales for the past couple of days, anyway...

The reason I wanted to do a format, was that I have "messed around" with the FCP folders etc (don't bother asking why), and I have basically screwed a lot of stuff up.

Also, I'm planning to move my 15,000 song playlist on iTunes to my other MAC and use that for general play, and use this MAC for actual work (film work) etc.

So I thought that the easiest thing to do would be to do a complete re-vamp and then re-install FCP 2 and CS4.

I think I caused some confusion regarding the latter. I had previously been using FCP. I have recently purchased and installed the upgrade to FCP 2 and purchased CS4, so CS4 is not currently on my computer.

[DrewIGR]

Ameer, There is nothing wrong with wiping your drive. Though OSX is fine without it, it can be good for your HD to start over.

After you back up your files and you boot up using your startup disk, you'll want to zero your drive first in the disk utility. This will basically write 0's over your entire drive to erase any previous data. After that is finished go to the partitions tab and create 2 partitions. After this is done create one partition. When that completes create 3 partitions, and when that is finished create one partition again. After this process your drive will be like new.

I'm not messing with you BTW this is the best way to setup your drive for re-installing OSX. When that procedure is complete then format your drive for Mac OS Extended Journaled and install OSX after this step is complete. Trust me, this may take a short while but it is much better for your machine than just re-installing OSX.

PM me with any questions. We wipe our Macs every 6 months to keep everything on the machine clean (HW & SW) for future projects.

[J Davis]

Sorry to disagree with you Drew but I can't see the reason to partition a drive, especially an internal boot drive.

Partitioning will make the CPU treat it as two drives but you have not physically added another drive head. FCP or premier is often accessing multiple files so your newly partitioned drive will be accessing one partition then the other and then back all the time. This will slow your overall performance noticeably.

With external drives being fairly inexpensive, I keep apps on the internal boot drive and media and scratch on the external. Without an external I would keep everything on the one drive without a partition and let OSX optimize.

Unless ... the partitioning process you mentioned is part of your drive wiping procedure? And you then return it to its original state without partitions?
Please feel free to disagree or tell me any advantages for partitioning as I am interested in your opinion.

[DrewIGR]

J Davis,
I completely agree with you about partitioning. It will only slow down your comps data access rates.

The procedure above ends with assigning one partition (meaning one single drive, not multiples) to the drive. What this process does is wipe any previously written assignments from the previous usage, and really helps you start clean. Our tech guy worked as an engineer for apple up until last year and highly recommends this procedure to extend the life of the drive and to keep her running smoothly. I know it sounds silly, but it makes sense, and only takes a couple of minutes, so why not.

[J Davis]

We on the same page then.
So what is it you do down there in texas?
Genuinely interested -actually .. I'll PM instead