Should I restore from Time Machine or just start from scratch

Question

Level 1

0 points

Should I restore from Time Machine or just start from scratch

Hi

I have a 2008 iMac which is very slow in Aperture, which is probably to be expected. However at most other tasks it is doing fine. As I already have upgraded the internal HD to 2GB (owing to a prior HD failure) and the Superdrive is broken I'm going to be creating a fusion drive by adding a new SSD in place of the Superdrive. I figured a $200 expenditure might give me another few years use out of it without me going crazy from excessive beachballing.

So here is my question: I've been installing new versions of OSX over one another since Panther. This time, when I reinstall Mountain Lion onto the fusion drive what would be my best bet: restoring my user preferences etc from Time Machine, or just creating a whole new set up and manually transferring over my stuff from a clone of my current drive? I imagine the Time Machine restore would be easier, I'm just worried about it copying over a lot of extraneous OS inefficiences due to the OS upon OSes over the years. Or is this something I do not need to worry about?

I'm sure this question has been asked many times but I didn't have any luck finding it on the board.

Many thanks for your assistance!

iMac (20-inch Early 2008), OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.2), 4GB

Posted on Dec 5, 2012 7:53 PM

Reply

Answer 1

Best reply

alkhater

Level 2

208 points

Dec 5, 2012 8:22 PM in response to martinfaint

If your latest TM backup has ML then it would restore your latest of everything. You don't have to warry about older versions.

Reply

Answer 2

ds store

Level 7

30,725 points

Dec 5, 2012 8:40 PM in response to martinfaint

Well first off it's a 2008 machine and it's almost 2013 now, the average life of a iMac in nearly daily use is about 6 years.

So your time is about up with that machine, and likely the dust bunnies haven't seen the light of day clogging up your rear vent exhaust ports, so the heat damage as already set in.

The SuperDrive is broken, the HD has failed, it's like a old car your pouring money into it and it doesn't have the CPU or graphics ability to handle much anymore.

Your even running that RAM hog of Mountain Lion on those older processors.

Your wasting your money on the SSD, it has only SATA II which is 3Gb/s, when newer machines with SSD's have SATA III with twice as much speed, so perhaps a 7,200 RPM hard drive would be best, but you have one already.

You can't "make" a Fusion drive, that's more flash placed on the logicboard in newer Mac's to load the more used items into RAM faster, sure you can put OS X, apps and bare bones users on the SSD, files on the 2GB but still it's only SATA II.

If the clone is done with Carbon Copy Cloner, you do have Recovery HD on the clone to reverse clone back on with, not so if you used the other one, Superdupes.

Recovery HD is what allows the fresh download of OSX from Apple's servers, with your AppleID and password that is.

I don't like TimeMachine, it takes too long and it's glitchy as all heck, if you hold the option key down on a wired or built in keyboard, you can boot from that clone you know, and format and reverse clone too. Would go a lot faster and defrag the drive too.

So once the Recovery HD is back on there (hold option/alt or command r at boot) you could wipe the Macintosh HD parititon then, reinstall OS X like, then install all your progams fresh and clean, then either use Migration Assistant against the clone or manually drag and drop stuff into same named user account files on the fresh install.

If you used Superdupes, then your stucky with the backwards timemachine gizmo, then have to erase and install from Recovery HD. 😝

I'd go for the clean, drag and drop only know files, god knows what TimeMachine or Migration Assistant will copy over. 👿

Reply

Answer 3

Linc Davis

Level 10

209,547 points

Dec 5, 2012 9:15 PM in response to ds store

You can't "make" a Fusion drive, that's more flash placed on the logicboard in newer Mac's to load the more used items into RAM faster

That's incorrect.

Reply

Answer 4

martinfaint Author

Level 1

0 points

Dec 6, 2012 5:24 AM in response to ds store

Thanks - it's funny you make the analogy with an old car as my Subaru 1997 Outback is also getting a bit long in the tooth. However it starts every morning and I don't have a car payment 🙂.

I did look long and hard at the new Mac lineup but couldn't find anything quite right. Given the propensity of hard drives to fail, the glued together iMac seems less than ideal, and the Mac Mini sans dedicated graphics card doesn't appeal as a long term prospect either. Maybe next year. Many thanks for your help.

Reply

Answer 5

ds store

Level 7

30,725 points

Dec 6, 2012 6:32 AM in response to Linc Davis

Linc Davis wrote:

You can't "make" a Fusion drive, that's more flash placed on the logicboard in newer Mac's to load the more used items into RAM faster

That's incorrect.

Well thanks for the: "Well not exactly, it's really is like this..." clarification there Linc. 😉

Reply

Answer 6

Linc Davis

Level 10

209,547 points

Dec 6, 2012 12:33 PM in response to ds store

A Fusion Drive is a Core Storage logical volume exported by a logical volume group that is backed by an SSD and an HDD. Any Mac that has those components and is running 10.8.2 should be able to be configured with a Fusion Drive.

Reply

Answer 7

keg55

Level 6

11,743 points

Dec 6, 2012 12:44 PM in response to Linc Davis

Linc Davis wrote:

.........Any Mac that has those components and is running 10.8.2 should be able to be configured with a Fusion Drive.

And that is correct. I'm running a Mac Mini mid-2011 with a Fusion drive. Using the coreStorage commands I configured my drives (SSD and HDD) to be within a Logical Volume Group. I'm running 10.8.2 on the Mac Mini AND enjoying every bit of the Fusion drive. It is working as designed.

Reply