Install or Upgrade

1999–2004August 26, 2002Macs Only!Mac OS
-- This is the option that most people who first install or are already running Mac OS X will use. The option automatically changes depending on whether or not any version of Mac OS X is installed.
  • Archive and Install -- This option is like a clean install in Classic Mac OS and is primarily for system reinstalls. No longer does one have to erase and install if the system needs to be reinstalled. There is also a check box to preserve users and network settings.
  • Erase and Install -- We will be using this option on our 800 MHz TiBook because we messed up its hard drive by foolishly stopping Micromat's Drive 10.1 defrag routine half way through. Never, ever do this despite the existence of a "Stop" button and no warning dialog box. It erases the target drive or partition before instgalling 10.2.

    In the "Installation Type" window, clicking the "Customize" button allows one to forego the installation of unneeded printer drivers, fonts and localized files to reduce the size of the installation significantly and to speed up the installation process. We unchecked all additional fonts and all printer drivers but Epson's. This reduced the size of the 10.2 installation by about 40 per cent. Unchecking localized files other than those for your language will substantially speed up the installation.

    When the installation is almost finished, "Optimizing System Performance" dialog now tracks the per cent completed. While this is psychologically helpful, like the installer's bar and its "Time Remaining" message, the OSP per cent message is not linear with time so it is still hard to tell when it will actually finish. But it is much better than wondering if it is really working when optimizing takes a long time.

    The time to Install Disk 1 using the "Upgrade" option for a fully up-to-date Mac OS X 10.1.5 takes a fairly long time. Install Disk 2 has additional software, mostly printer drivers and fonts, and generally takes under 10 minutes with the unnecessary fonts and printer drivers unchecked. Here are the Disk 1/Disk 2 installation times (in minutes) that we measured on three Macs:

    12.1" iBook/500 MHz G3/256 MB RAM -- 88/9 min.

    14.1" iBook/700 MHz G3/256 MB RAM -- 57/6 min.

    15.0" iMac/800 MHz G4/512 MB RAM -- 49/7 min.

    The only setup required after installation was to check the preference panels of the System Preferences application because some of them have had features added between 10.1.5 and 10.2. Otherwise, all of our preferences, settings and internet bookmarks/favorites were carried over from 10.1.5.

    We also tried the second installation option, Archive and Install, with saving user preferences and network settings. We did so on our 450 MHz G4 Cube with a priori Mac OS X 10.2 installation.

    The good news is that it went smooth as silk and super fast. Disk 1 took only 11 minutes and Disk 2 took only 4--clean installs are a snap with the new installer. The "Previous Systems" folder contained the previous root (or top) level folders for Applications, Library and System plus a few others. But only the applications installed by the 10.2 installer were replaced. All other applications were left in the root level Applications folder and appear to work fine. Applications or preference panels that install system level extensions or frameworks may have to be reinstalled.

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