Formatting Macbook Air?

GKDAIR · Apr 4, 2014

So, for a while now I have struggled with keeping space on my Macbook Air.

The biggest things I have are my itunes and all my Sims 3 games, but yet I still barely have 30 gigs free. I can't figure out what is taking up all the space, and I have programs like DaisyDisk installed to help me out.

There is nothing on this computer I can't live without that hasn't already been transferred, so I'm wondering if there is a way to just simply format my Air and erase everything off of it and start from scratch?

petvas · Apr 4, 2014

Do you use Time Machine for backup? If yes, then it might be the local snapshots. Have a look here: http://osxdaily.com/2011/09/28/disable-time-machine-local-backups-in-mac-os-x-lion/

Weaselboy · Apr 4, 2014

GKDAIR said:
There is nothing on this computer I can't live without that hasn't already been transferred, so I'm wondering if there is a way to just simply format my Air and erase everything off of it and start from scratch?

Sure.... just command-r boot to recovery. Then start Disk Utility and erase Macintosh HD to Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Quit Disk Utility then click reinstall OS and wait while the ~5GB OS downloads and installs.

At the end a setup process will run where you can setup a new admin account for yourself. This will give you a clean account with nothing but the OS installed.

If you want to give this a shot first though, enter the command below in Terminal and post up the output. This will list all the root folders and the size of each in GB.

Code:

sudo du -d 1 -x -c -g /

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Formatting Macbook Air?

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