Re-install Osx, how to...is it safe for logic? Options

[miaba]

Hi, I'm wondering if anyone can tell me how to go about re-installing osx without doing away with logic permantely. By that I mean; Is there a correct procedure for uninstalling logic? Is there anyway I might somehow erase and not be able to re-install logic? I'm new to logic and macs in general, and I've been told the best way to optimize hardisk space is by re-installing osx and to only run the applications that I'll need. This sounds correct, however, I have no idea where to begin. Any thoughts are welcome. Thanks!

[rickenbacker]

To be honest, simply having Adobe Acrobat or whatever on your computer won't affect Logic at all - it would only become a (slight) problem if you had it open at the same time. It would merely be taking away a little CPU power from Logic, that's all. I often have Acrobat or Preview open while using Logic so I can read the PDF manuals that inevitably come with plug-ins these days.

Yes, in an ideal world, you'd buy a new computer, delete everything except for the OS itself and then install nothing but music apps that you fully intend to use on a daily basis. But it never really works out like that. I think I've read the same EM article and it can throw you into temporary panic mode, worrying that you're killing your computer by occasionally surfing the internet and that you'll never be able to record another song properly again. Not really true!

Here's some good advice that I follow whenever I can remember (except for the Dock bit - my music Mac is still running Panther):

Next time you restart, launch Activity Monitor and see if there's anything running from startup there that you don't need (like an old scanner utility or something). If it's on the list, it's sucking up CPU time and RAM. Get rid of it. If you don't want to get rid of it just yet, you can also launch System Preferences, go to the Accounts pane, select your account from the left-hand list, click the Login items tab, find the process you want to remove, highlight it, and click the minus sign to remove it from your startup.

Put a solid color on your desktop instead of a picture. Pictures slow things down because your Mac has to load it into RAM and constantly redraw it.

Reboot occasionally.

Defrag your hard disk with a third party utility like Drive Genius or Tech Tool Pro 4.

Get rid of the Dashboard. It sucks up the RAM. To do this, open the Terminal (Applications/Utilities/Terminal) and type the following:

defaults write com.apple.dashboard mcx-disabled -boolean YES

Then press Return.

Then type:

killall Dock

and press Return again.

If you decide you want the Dashboard back sometime, go back to the Terminal and type the following:

defaults write com.apple.dashboard mcx-disabled -boolean NO

and press Return. Then either reboot or type:

killall Dock

and press Return again to restore the Dashboard.

Clearing your caches can make your Mac more efficient. The two main cache folders are /Library/Caches and /username/Library/Caches. Delete the contents of these folders (but not the folders themselves!) and reboot to rebuild them with fresh data.

Unmount any external drives you're not using. Only mount them when you need them.

Get rid of anything you don't use on your hard drive. You should always keep at least 10% of your hard drive free.

If you want to delete apps, just drag them to the Trash and then empty the Trash. If things won't delete, try DropNuke (cool utility, free download, Google it). That always works.