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How many times have you format your mac?

M

Mardiel8128

macrumors member
Original poster
Feb 27, 2023
72
9
Hello friends,
So I've been using windows for almost 20years and in windows you format almost every year the pc. With mac computers is the same?
 
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I've "formatted" (erased) my Mac twice, both times because I was having issues. Generally, I don't worry about it unless there's a problem and I need to reinstall.
 
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I've never reformatted my Macs. On Windows I used to do this about once a year but I found since Windows 10 it's not really needed.

Of course this depends on how you use your computer. If you're constantly installing and testing out different software then it might be needed. I try new software sometimes but I don't download everything I see. I don't run registry cleaners or similar cleaner software on my Mac. I use my computers for the actual tasks I'm doing.
 
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I run the OS I’m using on a Mac again as a VM and I test new apps there first. So far, I managed to avoid formatting.
 
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I used to do a clean install for every major OS version but have switched to every 2-3 years since they started with the yearly releases. The OS itself usually doesn't degrade too much over time, but one always accumulates some cruft from installing and removing applications that I find nice to clean out occasionally.
 
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Mardiel8128 said:
Hello friends,
So I've been using windows for almost 20years and in windows you format almost every year the pc. With mac computers is the same?
Click to expand...
No, even in Windows, we don't format every year anymore, unless you have too much free time. 😂 Sure, you can reformat your gaming PC often, but on actual productivity machine, time wasted on reinstallation times are money wasted.

We are not in the days of Windows 9x when reformatting and reinstalling Windows were quick and simple, with OS footprint could fit in 1 CD and most PCs were offline and we could just wait for a Service Packs to update Windows. Today, if you reformat your Windows 10/11 PC, after you are done with the OS install, you will spend the next few hours running Windows Update. It's a huge hassle to do this, especially with so many things we do on our computers now.

I believe now I only reformat PCs when I'm going to sell it/give it to another person. For my own computers, never, unless there's a catastrophic issue or I just receive a used unit.
 
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I do it once in a while, not often. Since newer macOS's have a protected system partition with snapshots it isn't really necessary any longer. Either the system partition works or it doesn't, to make a long story short, and if it doesn't you just reinstall macOS.
 
Windows -- that says it all. I formatted my Mac when they moved to a more secure encrypted boot disk. That is about it.
 
Mardiel8128 said:
and in windows you format almost every year the pc
Click to expand...
Just to point out that I've had PCs go many many years w/o needing to wipe them. My current desktop PC has not been fully erased and installed for 2+ years and when I say erased and installed, its actuall when I built the desktop back in 2020 - since then nothing. My work laptop has gone for over 5 years at one point. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

As for my Mac, I've yet to wipe my M1 MBP, before that my 2012 rMBP was reformatted a handful of times for a variety of reasons, none of which I remember. I do remember having one issue, not sure if it was on my iMac or my MBP but the OS upgrade completely borked my system where I had to recover from the internet and reformat the drive from scratch. That's an oddity, and thankfully that has never happened since (this was a few years ago).
 
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5 times this year including fresh install of Catalina over Monterey on the MBP2012
I can go into further detail....
 
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I would do a fresh install every year when the new OS would come out but now my Macs are too old for the new OS I still just do a fresh install every year out of habit.

its a bit odd and maybe a OCD on my part.
 
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Funny thing. I just did this last week after I installed Microsoft's Intune Company Portal app. I did this do connect to my work from my home machine. It messed up my login and iCloud settings to the point where simply uninstalling the app wasn't enough. I rarely do a clean install on a machine but felt I had to this time.

But aside from that, I only do a clean install when I am getting ready to trade in an older machine. Really don't need to do it otherwise.
 
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I've been on Macs since 2006 and I've never reformatted any drive, let alone a boot drive. The only system that has been reformatted is a 2008 Mac Mini, and that's because it no longer gets any sort of OS upgrades, so it was rebuilt on Ubuntu Linux. I suspect that's not what you're asking about.
 
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I've used Macs since early 90's and used to reformat and reinstall drives every now and then until 2009. From then onwards I have only done format + clean installs when I swap drives and not always even then as I use CCC -cloning software to transfer systems to/from my daily drivers. But, generally I don't reformat drives anymore if I don't really have to. Seems to work just fine.

Also, file fragmentation doesn't happen to Macs anymore so no reason to do it for that either.
 
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I'm thinking that with the m-series Macs, with the "sealed system volume", re-formatting wouldn't be necessary in any but the most extreme cases.

If one wished to "clear things off" and start fresh, one could use the "erase all user content and settings" option and start over that way.

You'll want to have a backup first!
 
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I've found no reason to format my Mac, my Windows machines, or even my Android phone for several years now.
I usually do it anyway only to find out it was a waste of time.
 
Only once for my 2014 iMac after its fusion drive failed and that led to other issues. I installed a new SSD and had to format and reinstall then.

I've seen people looking for help in these forums with issues that they're having - hardware, software or both - and it has surprised me how often some people offer the idea of wiping everything and doing a clean reinstall as a solution. Hearing that this is more common in the Windows world at least gives me a clue for why some folks may offer that as a solution so quickly, if they came to the Mac from the Windows world.
 
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Not really a thing that a Mac needs unless you're hitting problems. I did it very irregularly on my MBP 2016 and once I did it purely out of interest but not because I had a problem. Was utterly shocked how much iCloud restored for me and the total lack of need for me to reconfigure everything again - its these things that impress me so much about Apple.
 
I used to do it fairly often when playing around with system stuff.
It's time consuming so I've become more careful and test new OS' before updating.
Generally if you're careful and don't bloat up your system with un-needed apps you shouldn't need to reinstall.
The newer OS' in the past 5-10 years have been more buggy and I've seen so many reports of clean installs fixing all issues.
In saying that, reinstalls do help with cleaning up junk though, and I would just copy back what I needed (from a backup) and trash the rest.
 
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