Wiping the system drive for maintenance

[guitarrob]

I was wondering how often all of you were wiping the system drive on your Macs for maintenance purposes.

I am starting to get more freezes, especially on start-up and have been experiencing more general weirdness lately. So, I'm thinking of starting from scratch again.

It is a major hassle of course, starting with re-installing the OS (9.1), PT 5.1.1, all of my beloved plug-ins and the few other progs I have installed on my G4.

Anyway, I'd like to get an idea from those of you more experienced than I, how often I should do this sort of maintnence.

Any thoughts? I look forward to your responses.

[guitates]

1-Back up everything on your drive--Do you have Retrospect? You should also copy everything to your recording drive for re-installing after you wipe the drive.
2-Start up from the 9.1 CD =ControlPanels/startup disk-select 9.1 to startup from and hold the "C" key on restart
3-initialize the disk--Wipe it clean...
4-perform a cleaninstall with the 9.1
5-IF you had conflict catcher you could Merge the old system folders application items with the new one, in minutes--if not, then you must re-install as many things as possible and drag other items back to the new disk from the backup, may take hours-days to get your ducks back in a row again.

Before you do this, have you ran Norton Disk Doctor and Optimized your drive?? You might save yourself mucho hastle by getting a copy of Norton Systemworks--(DD6.0.) You must also start up from norton before running these Vital Maintenence procedures. I cannot imagine existing without running Norton every couple of weeks, as this will optimize the digital recording process and this maintenence IS absolutly necessary... [img]images/icons/cool.gif[/img]

[Michael Cottrell]

If you Zero out the drive you will lose any HD disk authorized software.

If you use something like Conflict Catcher along with Disk Warrier you can usually clean up drive problems.

I recommend doing a "Clean Install" of your OS. This creates a pristene System folder and a Previous System folder with all you extensions to copy over to new System Folder without wiping the drive. Conflict Catcher can make this a less laborious task.

[img]images/icons/cool.gif[/img]

[Michael Cottrell]

Initialize the disk renders a conflict catcher clean install useless.

[guitarrob]

Thanks for the replies guys. Michael, are you saying that using Conflict Catcher along with Disk Warrior will solve most hard drive problems, and therefore may eliminate the need to do a clean re-install? If so, I may give it a try.

I do use Norton to optimize and check / repair my drives, but this does not do the trick. Is Disk Warrior any different?

Thanks in advance for your responses.

[Michael Cottrell]

Most problems you encounter are either corrupted or damaged Extension files and directories. Both these pieces of software reliably address these issues.

The term clean install is often misunderstood to mean initialize the drive. But a "Clean Install" actually means the opposite. A clean install makes a new system folder on your current disk. It preserves your old system folder and renames it "Previous System Folder".

Normally after Clean Install you will have to maually copy over your needed files and extension to the new system folder manually. If you have conflict catcher and are installing the same OS version you can do what is called a "Clean Install System Merge" which allows you to pick which files are to be moved. This can save you hours of work.

Either way the whole deal can be rather complex if you're not comfortable with all these operations. However, sucessfully complete these actions can make your system run just like new. [img]images/icons/wink.gif[/img]

[where02190]

The utility package Mac Care Unit, available online or at your local comp USA, contains the best utilities availble for the mac, including Diskwarrior and Plus Optimizer, aolng with Conflict Catcher and others. It si a part of our regular maintenance program here.
What you are probably experiencing is corrupt files combined with a framented drive. Both are easily repaired with this great utilities package. I recommend it highly over Norton.

[guitarrob]

Thanks again for the replies guys. I will be purchasing Mac Care Unit and will be administering medical aid to my G4 next week during my Christmas vacation.

I'll let you know how it works out.

Happy Holidays.

[billbo]

I've explained this here on the DUC quite a few times. Without the lengthy story about how I found this out, here's one of the best ways to keep you Mac mean and clean:
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:<HR>(from the MacGurus DiskWarrior, Norton Disk Doctor, Disk First Aid, Norton Speed Disk, and finally DiskWarrior again, all this on a monthly basis.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I don't have Disk Warrior, but I do have the Norton Tools.

I tried Conflict Catcher back in the OS 8.1 days, but I didn't really like it then. One thing that can help you the most though with Pro Tools, is using a stripped down, bare minimum Control Panel/Extension Set.

There's quite a lot of good threads on Extensions, and I have posted my "PT's Set" at
http://duc.digidesign.com/cgi-bin/ub...&f=24&t=007933

One thing I've found quite helpful with re-installing everything, is after you actually have done a "Clean Install" (after "Zero{-ing} All Data" and re-initializing your system HDD) of your OS and all of your other software, is to use a couple of Aladdin's Stuffit App's to make a OS/Application Installer CD. Of course after compressing all of your HDD, you'll mostly find you can't fit it all on a CD, so if you have a G4 with a DVD/RAM, that may be a better choice.

[guitarrob]

Just wanted to write in to say that using Conflict Catcher along with Disk Warrior apparently solved my HD problems. No more freezes on start-up and no more unexplainble crashes in PT, at least not yet. So, I got the desired results without wiping my drive. Thanks for all the replies, and a big thanks, Michael, for the Disk Warrior / Conflict Catcher suggestion.