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Downloading a Fresh OS from the App Store?

G

garycurtis

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Sep 15, 2010
331
0
Los Angeles & Northern California
In the past, when I downloaded Mavericks, I was not given a choice about the destination drive. I could only target the drive I was currently booted on.

I am having problems on my iMac. The tech support people at Alsoft (DiskWarrior) analyzed error messages I showed them and said the best solution was to wipe the drive clean and re-install Mavericks.

How do you connect to the App store if your main drive is erased? No OS, no Safari to get online. I have two ext drives that can boot. But how do I funnel a new OS to another drive? In this case, the 1Tb HD on my iMac.

The iMac doesn't have a DVD slot, so it is the App store online, or nothing. I'm also concerned about having TimeMachine do a Restore for all my data files and system preferences/passwords, etc. Will those old OS settings pollute the new system?
 
Oh, boy. I get to play doctor. I'm putting on my white coat and preparing for surgery right now. I'm sure the patient will live.

You saved me a lot of time researching this. With computers it seems now matter how much you read, there always seems to be details left out. Pogue is only partial in the Missing Manual.

I truly thank you.

Gary Curtis
Santa Monica
 
Be sure to have a backup of your data - a simple enough comment but one that it seems many forget or bypass.
 
garycurtis said:
Oh, boy. I get to play doctor. I'm putting on my white coat and preparing for surgery right now. I'm sure the patient will live.
Click to expand...

It's almost too easy now :D I'm rebuilding an older computer for a friend and it's amazing how quickly these new features like Internet Recovery have spoiled me. What, I have to find the system DVDs now? :p
 
garycurtis said:
How do you connect to the App store if your main drive is erased? No OS, no Safari to get online. I have two ext drives that can boot. But how do I funnel a new OS to another drive? In this case, the 1Tb HD on my iMac.
Click to expand...

Boot one of the external drives and download the full installer to that. Then you can either
1) run the installer from the external drive but select your iMac internal as the install target drive, or
2) make a usb installer stick while booted from the external, then boot that and use it to install to the iMac

In either case, you'll have Disk Utility available so you can wipe your target drive first.

Making the usb stick is only slightly more work, but it is handy to have around, especially if you have a slow internet connection as I do.
 
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