Is there a way to refresh your Mac without reformatting?

Hello jing:

Speed is relative. Specific issues may be addressed, but I do not understand your specific problem.

If you really want to reinstall OS X, I would use an archive and install:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1710

Barry

There are several reasons why your computer could feel slower to day than it did when you first bought it.

1) startup speeds slow down as you add more programs and utilities to the login items list. Open your system preferences and look at the Accounts tab - login items. There may be things you can remove to speed up the boot time - but be careful because you may need some of them there for certain programs to work as expected

2) as users start using their computer with more confidence and authority the small amount of RAM their computer came with can become overwhelmed by the 10 programs they now launch regularly. Open up the Activity Monitor and see how much memory your computer is using. Pay attention to the swap outs and swap ins. Lots of activity there could mean it is time for more RAM.

3) as you begin adding more movies, tv shows, and music to your collection the very large hard drive become full. You should, in general, keep at least 15GB or about 10-15% of your hard drive space free (whichever is smaller). Many programs need to create their own temporary files, swap files, and caches - not including what the operating system itself does - so leaving some breathing space is a good idea. There are also utilities that can clean various OS and application cache files which will reclaim space, though as you begin using the computer again they will be rebuilt.

4) along with having enough hard drive space is disk fragmentation which seems to be what you are concerned with. I left it for last because it is, generally, the last thing we Mac owners need to be concerned with. Unless your hard drive has become overly full or you deal with video or audio files which you load up the drive with and then delete later, you probably don't have much to worry about. The Mac defrags the hard drive pretty well on its own. However, if you think this is the issue that is causing your slowdown, the easiest way to fix it is with SuperDuper! (or carbon copy cloner) and a second hard drive. Both these programs perform file level bootable backups of the hard drive. So as the files are copied to the secondary drive they are all laid down without fragmentation. They aren't optimized, which is another story altogether, but tests I've seen with optimized vs unoptimized drives haven't shown me a significant enough difference for the ordinary user to make the cost of the software worthwhile. Not saying there's no benefit, but most of us don't really need it.

Hello j:

No. An archive and install will install a fresh OS X while retaining your files, programs, and settings. However, it is ALWAYS a good idea to have a backup before any software changes.

Barry

If I were you, I'd use the combination of AppleJack v1.5 and Leopard Cache Cleaner (all maintenance and cleaning modes) to get rid of all the built-up stuff that can go bye-bye. It will help tremendously.

Start by doing everything you can running AppleJack in single-user boot mode (hold apple+s to start that, type Applejack at the prompt). Run the automatic mode to have it do everything. If that isn't a big enough help, then run Leopard Cache Cleaner to rebuild some of the internal databases and wipe out the caches/corrupt or unused preferences files... Also, wiping out the language localization support files for languages you don't use on the computer inside all the applications on your drive will reclaim a lot of valuable drive space and speed things up too.

Be sure to also unload / uninstall any drivers for hardware and extraneous startup-programs and haxies you aren't using anymore (or never have used) so they don't load up at startup and waste memory/CPU.

I am not an expert on Leopard, but I do understand Free BSD which is the underlying operating system. A Free BSD system should NEVER require a re-install, as it is based on the philosophy of a relatively small kernel and independent / inter-dependent tasks (daemons). My advice is to do the following:
1. Find up which directory takes large amount of disk space and see what is in that directory, than use the appropriate utility to flush it. My post titled "Startup Disk Full" might give you a pointer.
2. Launch the activity monitor and see which tasks gobble CPU time and virtual memory.
3. From a terminal window launch the program top which will reveal tasks that the activity monitor did not.
4. If you find such a task follow man pages to understand how to refresh that task.
5. Launch the disk utility and run Verify Disk to see that your disk is not broken.

You should never have to defragment. The file system defragments itself on the fly.

You may need to investigate for a while (usually in less two hours you can find out what is wrong), but it sure beats re-installing.

I also suggest that you get a fire wire disk drive an install a bootable version of the OS on it. This will allow you to handle your file system from an external view point. It will also give you an emergency system if you disk breaks.

Aharon

Jing

You should start with the simplest, easiest things first. Nobody has suggested yet that the simplest, easiest thing to do first is check/repair your hard disk and permissions, run all the maintenance scripts, empty your caches, etc.

If you download a little piece of freeware called MainMenu, that application will do it all for you.

You won't lose anything (unless you select the option in MainMenu to delete all of your browser history and cookies).

I'd try that first. It may solve all your problems.

Hello jing:

This has gotten off topic. You indicated you wanted to "reformat" without deleting everything. My original answer, performing an archive and install will do that. If you want to try to hunt around for ways to "speed" your system without an A&I, you need to specifically indicate what problem areas you are addressing.

As an observation, using GUI programs to "maintain" a system running OS X frequently cause more problems than they solve. For example, clearing system cache files will slow a system for a period of time.

Barry

I would reiterate the best way to speed up the system without reinstalling is thus:

• Remove unnecessary items from the log-in items list in user accounts preferences to free up additional memory and speed up the log-in process, lessen CPU load.

• Remove device drivers for things no-longer connected or expected to be connected.

• Run system maintenance items in Terminal to keep things well groomed of bloat:
periodic daily, periodic monthly, periodic weekly, update_prebinding, fsck -fy, etc...

• Use a third party program like I suggested to wipe out all the system and user cache files, rebuild locating databases and other things like that that can cause filing system delays. Caches can be a big source of delays if they become full or corrupt. Sometimes searching through a cache that is too large takes more time than just finding the information again. Sometimes information cached has since been updated elsewhere and the cached information is nolonger good or current. Hence a good reason to wipe your browser caches too periodically just to keep things fresh.

Yes, it's true Leopard does its own automatic defragging, it's not optimizing anything about file placement or analyzing most used files or system files versus user files and arranging them closer together, etc. If you want to optimize disk structure for faster loading, then you can do it with third party utilities like Leopard Cache Cleaner (file optimize options). Generally speaking, just deleting large amounts of unnecessary files from a hard drive will speed it up once the system's internal defragging routines have had some time to rearrange things.

Check in Application Monitor to see if there are background processes running that shouldn't be and shut them down, then figure out with Spotlight where to go to move them from to keep them from automatically being loaded at startup or delete them outright.

I'm gonna take one last stab at this thread here:

Another thing to try is to run the last combo-updater installer for Mac OS X Leopard. This would have the effect of replacing any files that are missing that may slow the computer down as well as running the maintenance scripts which update prebinding and permissions and all that. Of course I think it far simpler just to run the maintenance scripts directly from Terminal or single user boot mode, but there is the off chance that a reinstall of the OS by means of an updater package would have other beneficial effects in terms of wiping out corrupted files or replacing missing ones. This is usually the least painful approach for correcting any problems with interrupted or messed prior installations of the same major version of Mac OS X as well. It's much simpler than doing an archive and install from a DVD as it usually doesn't mess up your user settings.

Here's a versiontracker link to the Leopard package you should install:

http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/29147

Reformat and restore from backup made by SuperDuper or TimeMachine works for me.

No. Just make sure you select the "preserve user preferences and data" setting.

Did you read the info Barry Hemphill linked?