Best Practice For OS/PT Upgrades?

[Jon_Atkinson]

Hey all,

Been stuck on PT10.2.0 and OS10.7.2 for ages while I completed a very lengthy project...

Time to move forward now as I have a bit of down time, and also nice to prepare for PT11 (as it's a co-install with PT10 and will presumably just install next to PT10), so looking to go to Mountain Lion.

I'm wondering what the 'best' method of upgrade is?

I'll put in a fresh system drive and do a clean install of 10.8.3 and clean download and install of 10.3.5... No issues there.

But I'm wondering what's best practice regarding plugins?

I guess the safest route is to re-download and reauthorise... Is that what you guys do?
The other option is to simply copy the relevant .dpm and .aaxplugin files from the previous system... Is that asking for trouble?

Not wanting to cut corners here, but I also don't want to make unnecessary work for myself!

Thanks for your thoughts!

Jon

[nst7]

Definitely re-download and intall plugins from scratch. Don't try to migrate them.

[Drew Mazurek]

I know this isn't going to be popular advice but I've done several experiments, cloning and upgrading versus "pure" installs, and have found clones work perfectly fine.

However, I maintain MANY boot partitions for testing purposes so I am used to messing around with all this and probably have more patience than your average user.

For example, right now I have a "pure" 10.8.4 partition and a 10.8.4 that has come from a Lion clone and they both work perfectly. The reason I do this (aside from testing) is because I have TONS of stuff on these machines and redoing EVERYTHING is really annoying.

Anyway, my 2 cents.

Most will say to do fresh installs.

[Darryl Ramm]

Most important step is backup/clone the system before doing anything. And/or just buy a new boot/system drive (time to get an SSD if you don't already have one and do a clean install of everything onto that. Having two fully working boot/system drives is a nice way to work.

Darryl

[Jon_Atkinson]

Thanks all...!

Darryl, yes, couldn't agree more... Always have a way to go back, so I clone my system drive monthly just in case..!
SSD's are totally the way forward for a system drive.. I have my system down to under 50GB anyway, so the drives are super cheap now.
Total no-brainer..!

Drew, I wonder if updating over previous installs has become safer than in the past? Have Apple just got better at not leaving unnecessary files behind when you upgrade? Just thinking aloud here...

Arguably putting in a new system drive is the least time consuming and safest bet anyway... But regarding plugins:

nst7, not the answer that I was hoping for, but at least I know I'm not wasting time by re-downloading!

I'm fully aware that the achilles heel of any PT system, and probably the main cause of instability in anyone's system is plugin related.. So, bit of downloading to do..!

Thanks for your thoughts chaps...

[Drew Mazurek]

Originally Posted by Jon_Atkinson

Drew, I wonder if updating over previous installs has become safer than in the past? Have Apple just got better at not leaving unnecessary files behind when you upgrade? Just thinking aloud here...

I think you're right.

PT11, with its drag and drop installation (Mac only) is more evidence of this IMO. Drag and drop installation presumes, no uninstaller needed.

[Jon_Atkinson]

And with the App store OS upgrades which self-erase, you'd imagine that getting rid of the unnecessary duplicates (which were presumably part of the problem with incremental updating) is well taken care of by Apple...

[Jon_Atkinson]

Ok,

So that was a load of downloading....

One thing I really have noticed with effectively starting from scratch with all my plugins, is how much easier some plugin manufacturers make that process compared to some others...

Waves for instance was super easy.... Unified installer... Just tick the ones you have licences for... Really simple.

Massey too was a breeze (although I guess he only has a few plugins).

Sony was ok.

Native Instruments is a bit of a pain, in that you have to re-install from the DVD then upgrade each plugin individually... (unless I missed something).... Bit time consuming, especially as I own all their plugs...

AVID plugins however were an absolute nightmare... Total shambles... I really shouldn't have to go digging around in the depths of a very poorly laid out website to find the plugin version which is compatible with my system (which after all is now totally up to date)
Frankly I'm very underwhelmed by that.... Making a direct comparison with other plugin manufacturers AVID come out very poorly in this regard.