To Mac or not to Mac

**x_outpost** · September 14th, 2013 01:11 AM

Originally Posted by stavros

Whats that, deleting the partition and do a clean install?

For an enterprise environment, we run a Mac OS X Server running several partitions. Each version of OS X (i.e. 10.8, 10.7, 10.6 and so forth) runs each own netboot set and runs as a deployment server. In addition, each version of OS also has its own netboot set that we use to boot with various utilities (i.e. CCC, various recover tools, etc). But I'm not going to go through that details since you'll need more than one computer to establish this plus in order to do this, you'll need to know how to create scripts, package apps and create workflows from the server.

Anyways, for home use, what you would want to do is get a 16GB or larger USB thumb drive. Install a new OS on it. After installing the new OS, boot using that USB drive. While you are booted to that drive, download CCC (Carbon Copy Cloner) and install it on the USB drive which you are currently booted.

After this, plug in a USB hard drive that has enough disk space as your internal drive. Format the USB hard drive as a GUID partition. Then run CCC and clone your internal drive to your USB drive. This process may take up to 6 hours depending on the size of your drive. After cloning, you now have the same 1 to 1 copy of your internal drive and your USB hard drive. You can boot on either of these drives but we're not doing that.

Now, proceed by running Disk Utility again and format your internal drive as a GUID partition (don't worry, you have your exact clone on your USB hard drive). After formatting, install a fresh OS on your internal drive.

Then, once you have 10.8.x installed, boot on your internal drive and run Software Update to install all available updates. You may have to run the update a couple of times since some updates requires a certain update (i.e. firmware update).

While you are booted on your internal drive, run Migration Assistant and migrate your files, applications and settings.

Done!

You might say, that process sucks since it involves a lot of process. Yes, I agree. But this process allows you to refresh your OS, be able to migrate back your data and apps and don't loose any performance due to constant OS upgrade.