I've actually tried all three methods in various settings, and I find, as usual, that reformatting and installing everything fresh is the best way to go. Yes, it's long ang cumbersome, and I have no idea where every single installation CD is, but it's the best way to make sure you are only installing the stuff you want. We've all downloaded and installed God only knows how many shareware/freeware products, and be honest, you only use a few of them. I've also tinkered under the hood quite a bit, and not all of those hacks will work in Tiger the same way they did in Panther, so it is always a good idea to start fresh with any major system upgrade.

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A nice new variation that I tried with Tiger (and which can sort of be done with 10.3, but works best with the 10.4) is to backup, erase, and install.

BUT I made a new placeholder account. And I used the migration tool to move my old account, applicationss, etc over from the drive that I had backed up to.

So, I get my stuff, and I get a clean system, and it's pretty easy. Then, if I have any weird things happen, I can compare the behavior under my placeholder account with the one I transitioned over. Which might give me clues if there are any problems.

Or at least that would be the idea, if things weren't just working fine, which they are.

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Due to my aging iBook and my prospective financial timeline, my Tiger upgrade option will likely be "Buy a new laptop" :-)


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"I have seen the evils of procrastination, and I vow to change my ways tomorrow."

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I can't really vote as I did three different type of installations on different systems.

On my personal system I did a backup, erase & install, then used the Migration tool that is now part of the installer.

On the Xserve I administer I did an upgrade install so as to have as little downtime on my services as possible.

On the Client machines I administer at the labs with the Xserve I did a just plain erase & install and reconfigured from scratch.

Interestingly enough, except for a couple of poorly documented changes in Server, all the ways worked very well. Very little downtime on any machine.

The only one I didn't do was the Archive & Install, but seeing as how much stuff can get moved over if you use the migration tool the difference between the two is probably academic.

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....used that method on my Dual 2GHz G5. Had no major hiccups, save for copying over Macromedia's preference files over. Everything else worked out of the box. I did a clean install on my PowerBook G3; pleased to report that went smoothly.

Once I have time over the summer, I'd like to do a clean install on my G5.

-Krishna

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Creator of "The PC Weenies" Cartoon


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Elsewhere I have seen people suggest that an Erase & Install of Tiger will result in noticeably faster performance than an Upgrade from 10.3.x. Can anyone comment based on first-hand experience? TIA.

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My boot drive is divided into three volumes. I backed up the boot (first) volume, containing OS 10.3.9, onto the second volume, then did an Erase and Install onto the first volume, and when the Setup Assistant launched, it asked me if I wanted to use the Migration Assistant to import settings, applications, etc. from another volume. I said yes, and let it carry over my settings, etc. from the second volume. I figured this was cleaner than an Archive and Install, since I've seen trouble with A&I installations that were due to the installer leaving behind some files (probably invisible ones) that it figured it could re-use in the newly installed system. Of course, the cleanest approach would have been not to use the Migration Assistant, but instead to reinstall all my apps, and manually re-enter all my settings, but I wanted to see what would happen with the Migration Assistant, since I'd never used it before. After doing this, I began to see some odd behavior, crashes, etc., so I installed another drive, and did a completely clean Erase and Install of OS 10.4 onto it, so I have a known-good installation to compare to the behavior of my Migration Assistant'ed volume. Since then, enough of the odd problems with my main boot volume have quieted down enough, on their own, so I haven't had to do any comparing yet, but it's a matter of time.

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