[P1] How Often Does Jag need a reinstall?

[Jack Rodgers]

On Wednesday, January 22, 2003, at 12:54  PM, Pat D. Stephens wrote:

> I'm using my month old iBook just as it came to me without a 
> partitioned drive, but am warned that it is dangerous to do that since 
> X has reputedly required a reinstall frequently.

There are two reasons I can think of when one might want to reinstall 
ANY operating system preceeded by an erasure of the drive:

1) Things have become so screwed up that no amount of troubleshooting 
seems to solve the problem.

2) You have downloaded tons of software of the net and tried it out and 
your hard drive is approaching 2 free bytes.

I have suffered with both. In fact I bought a new TiBook with a Jaguar 
update disk and the update either didn't work right or when I copied 
over my user stuff, something busted. I had weeks of problems until I 
bit the bullet and did a wipe and a clean install.

With OS X's 200,000 plus files (varies of course) it has become 
impossible to find all of the files belonging to an unwanted shareware 
application, etc., and remove them. Thus remains the nagging feeling 
that your drive is really crappy and loaded with unwanted stuff. These 
emotions eventually have an affect on your Mac and it suffers a nervous 
breakdown. So, you either have to do the reinstall before this happens 
or after it happens, your choice.  :)

Partitioning a drive has its advocates and detractors. It's really your 
choice since there doesn't seem to be any proven authority on the 
subject that can explain why it would be bad. I don't think there are 
any lab tests, etc, nor any studies that show that XX% more failures 
are attributed to partitioning. Sometimes a partition breaks but so 
does an unpartitioned drive. I've had failures under both conditions.

Apple doesn't partition its drives but it does provide software that 
will should you want to so in a way Apple is condoning partitioning.

---
I noticed while listening to the Capital Gang on CNN rant on pro and 
con about UM's 20 points for Blacks that not one of the CG on CNN is 
Black.
Jack Rodgers

Email: jackrodgers at earthlink.net
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