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Increase system speed through a format and install System
This is not an earth-shattering hint, but the result was very surprising. I have a 600mhz dual-USB iBook and was never happy with its speed in OS X. It came with OS X and I immediately partitioned the drive into two volumes. The speed was OK. Even though I upgraded the RAM to 640megs, I could relate to all the other users griping about the beachballs. When I got Jaguar, I did an archive and install and never noticed the speed increase I read about. For me, it ran slower.

Yesterday, while trying to diagnose a modem issue, I decided to format my drive and re-install 10.2. Everything was backed up anyway. The speed improvement was shocking. Whereas before, the dock icons for Word or Entourage would take 10-15 bounces, now take 3. The whole system feels as good as OS 9 again. Web browsing is much faster with my cable modem using aiport. Pages come up instantly rather than taking 8-10 seconds.

I can't say what had made my iBook so slow before and while wiping out one's HD is an extreme tip...it is certainly worth a try.

[Editor's note: I can't attest for any speed gains through formatting, but if you think your machine isn't performing as it should, it might be worth a shot. Just make sure you have a good backup first! In addition, a previous hint discusses other methods of speeding up OS X on a G3, most of which are still valid hints under 10.2.2.]
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Not scientific, but...
Authored by: kirkmc on Nov 12, '02 11:15:59AM

... maybe it does change things. I am a bit dubious, though. If anything, it would at least have the same effect as defragmenting your hard disk. Since OS X uses big (80 MB) swap files, fragmentation will slow down most operations, if the swap files cannot be in contiguous blocks. But other than that, a clean install would remove some cache files that might be slowing things up...

Kirk



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Not scientific, but...
Authored by: dr_turgeon on Nov 12, '02 01:02:30PM
I agree. The defragmentation after reinstall was probably just a small contributer to the speed increase -- and that clean caches, etc. may have had more to do with it.

But did you partition your drive again, I wonder. You mention that you had originally but what about now?

PS, Perhaps the 10.2.2 update had the modem fix you're looking for?

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Not scientific, but...
Authored by: derek23 on Nov 12, '02 03:34:15PM

Don't forget a completely clean hard disk dir structure as well. Whatever the exact reasons, as a support tech and avid gamer, I know well that a wipe of a machine always helps performance, sometimes shockingly. Especially on PCs :)



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worked for me
Authored by: rbl on Nov 12, '02 04:30:31PM

I've done this on my office's G4 and my iBook and the results are the same.
When you install 10.1 (or even 10), upgrade it to every 10.1.x and finally to 10.2, your computer will be slower than a single 10.2 installation.
If you think fragmentation is the reason, compare the performances from a 2 week old 10.2 installation with a brand new 10.0 upgraded to 10.2 installation.
You will be surprised! =)



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I agree
Authored by: Alex281 on Nov 12, '02 04:36:05PM

I originally did an archive and install and I've seen a significant speed boost since I erased and installed.



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