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!

[miaba]

I did forget one thing: what is absolutely essential in order to use the internet, logic, and word. These things are my only real need for my powerbook.

[rickenbacker]

If you initialise your hard disk in order to reinstall OS X, you'll lose everything on your disk - in other words, you'll be starting all over again with a blank slate. You can then reinstall anything that you have the necessary discs to install. I'm not convinced how much real-world benefit you'll notice by not reinstalling, say, TextEdit or Internet Explorer. Most applications are tiny - Logic itself is under 20Mb, I think. It's only the loops that take up space.

Why not try deleting a few applications you never use, dump a few printer drivers from the Library and then use something like TechTool Pro to optimise your hard drive without having to reinstall OS X?

Whatever you decide, back everything up first - use Mike Bombich's Carbon Copy Cloner (it's free - Google it) to create an exact copy of your current system to an external FireWire drive. Then you can simply drag back over the things you want to reinstall. Caveat: this works for most applications, but might not work for all.

[miaba]

That seems reasonable. Do you know if there is a specific "uninstall" process or will moving items to the trash then emptying the trash handle the task?
What brought all of this on was an article I read on electronic musician's web site. It was all about getting the most out of OS X when using a computer as a DAW. I started wondering if slimming down my system would improve logic's performance. As I said, using microsoft word, web browsing, and itunes are the only applications I will be using outside of logic. That's not to say I don't like having the others around, but if they are compromising logic, then I would have no problem letting them go. If manualy deleting unused programs generated the same results as an install, I'd rather do that. What would you do?

[gdoubleyou]

The best thing you can do to improve performance is to max out your RAM, and record to an audio only hardrive.

With most hardrives, fragmented files are not an issue because of the large cache found on most drives.

As long as you have the install disks, you can delete an install Logic as many times as you want.

If you want to clean the disk befor installing, use the disk utility found int the utilities folder in the applications folder to initialize and or partition the drive.

There really isn't a lot of tweaking that can be done with OSX, as compared to OS9.

[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.

[hahaworld]

Logic Pro 7 does not include an uninstaller. If you need to uninstall the software, manually delete the items listed below. Some items may not be present, depending on what has been installed. Please be sure to address the items that are flagged in the Notes column before deleting files; removing some of these can have an impact on your other applications.

The tilde (~) in the path on the last 5 items in the list represents your Home folder.

Path File/Folder Notes

/Applications/Logic Pro
/Applications/WaveBurner
/Applications/Utilities/Soundtrack Loop Utility
/Library/Application Support/REX Shared Library
/Library/Application Support/GarageBand (1)
/Library/Application Support/Logic
/Library/Documentation/Logic Acknowledgements.rtfd
/System/Library/Private Frameworks/ ProKit.framework (2)
/Library/Receipts/Logic Pro.pkg
~/Library/Application Support/Logic (3)
~/Library/Preferences/Logic PMData (3)
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.logic.pro.plist (3)
~/Library/Preferences/Logic (3)
~/Library/Application Support/Logic (3)

Notes on the numbered items:

1 - Do not delete this folder if the application GarageBand is installed on your system.
2- Do not delete this file if other Pro applications, such as Final Cut Pro, are installed on your system.
3- Item only present after Logic Pro has been launched.

[miaba]

Thanks, everyone this has me on the right track. The panic has passed. One last thing though; would deletion of excess fonts free up some space?

[gdoubleyou]

It may free up some ram, but may cause problems if you delete fonts that are the default fonts for certain apps.

I have actually added several hundred fonts for graphic design, haven't noticed a performance hit with or without them.

[minskybabs]

Hi there gdoublyou, slightly off track for MacMusic, but my partner does Graphic Design, and we had real problems when we tried lots of fonts on 10.3.3, have not dared try again since. What OS do you use, and do you use FontBook (or Fontbook 2) or have you a seperate font manager?

I ended up reinstalling OSX 10.3.1 then using combo updater up to 10.3.9 but we have not put all the fonts back on yet. She uses OS9 still for most of her graphoc work, but we are about to take the plunge to all out tiger on both our machines, wondered if you had any font tips before we do!
Thanks Jake.