Experience rebuilding OS-X

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This morning I had to do my fifth rebuild of OS-X 10.6 in just over three months and my second in five days. It's now working beautifully, but then it was just after the last rebuild...

But I discovered something really useful that I hadn't spotted before. After reloading the OS you get the option to reinstall from a TM backup. I have always skipped this step before but this time I accepted it. I then discovered that you can do a partial restore including installed programs, which has saved me many hours of work.

I don't know whether I have a H/W fault, given how unreliable my machine has been for months. But given how slickly it's now running that seems hard to imagine.

I have a question. I have always skipped a certain class of data files when making TM backups, because I can reload them from outside and they would just greatly slow down the TM process. But this time I forgot a new group of files that I didn't have anywhere else, so I've lost them (and the 20+ hours it took to download them!). I'm considering moving to a complete TM backup.

I have a selection of blank USB disks available, but nothing between 320gb (not big enough for a complete TM backup) and 1tb (way bigger than I need). My question is - can I use a TM disk for anything else as well? I will never need more than 500gb as that's how big my internal drive is, so otherwise I'll be wasting the other 500gb on that external drive.

Actually I have another question. Does a TM backup save the entire system, warts and all? So if there's a problem lurking will that be replicated in the backup? If so then I'd better do another backup right now, while my machine's running sweetly and there don't seem to be any problems. Even though I'm now running 10.6.6 rather than 10.6.8.
 
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Time machine backs up everything apart from the core OS

You can partition the hard disk, but if you wish you can still store other folders on a time machine disk

But you may need to use the 1 TB drive, since it back-up your 500 gb disk and then adds all further files and changes over time (but also see sentence above)

Seems odd that you need to keep doing fresh installs, perhaps using a program like ONYX would be better at keeping your Mac in shape without re-installing. I have done on;y 2 re-intalls, one from a failed hard disk and one from a hard disk upgrade, both times using Time machine to bring the system back from the dead
 
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That had occurred to me, but it's only two months old. Replaced when the original suddenly failed in July. I don't currently have another one - they aren't available here - but I'm off to the US shortly and I'll buy another one there.

Is there any non-destructive yet conclusive way of assessing the performance of a HD? An equivalent to Windows Chkdsk?
 
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That had occurred to me, but it's only two months old. Replaced when the original suddenly failed in July. I don't currently have another one - they aren't available here - but I'm off to the US shortly and I'll buy another one there.

Is there any non-destructive yet conclusive way of assessing the performance of a HD? An equivalent to Windows Chkdsk?

I take it you didn't read the post that I provided a link to.
 
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Looking at the Onyx website it seems it only runs under 10.7 and 10.8, not the 10.6 I have. Am I reading it correctly?
 

RavingMac

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Looking at the Onyx website it seems it only runs under 10.7 and 10.8, not the 10.6 I have. Am I reading it correctly?

I think there is a Mtn Lion version, I run Onyx and have upgraded all f our Macs to 10.8, don't recall if I had to download a new version of Onyx going from Lion to Mtn Lion.

EDIT: too slow typing again. ;P
 

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