Increase system speed through a format and install

Nov 12, '02 08:04:49AM

Contributed by: leejohnw

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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