How to Clean Install Mojave Mid 2014 15" MacBook Pro

[EPHS612]

Hello,
I have a Mid 2014 Macbook Pro set up nicely with Bootcamp Running El Capitan 10.11.6 on the Mac partition and Window 10 on Windows partition.

I bought a new BenQ 27" 4k monitor for photo editing to use mainly with the Mac OS side.

A few questions to anyone knowledgeable about updating a 4 year old MacBook Pro to the latest Mac OS:

1) Would there be any speed or performance advantage to doing a clean install from El Capitan to Mojave OS on the mid 2014 15" MacBook Pro?

2) If "yes", Would I be able to easily "clean install" on just the Mac partition side of my boot camp set up? (ie, leaving the Windows operating system and its windows based photo programs intact) or does clean install require that I wipe the entire SSD drive clean (including the Windows partition)?

3) Does anyone know a definitive source for step by step instructions on how to do a clean install of an Mac OS on the Mac partition of a Bootcamp set up?

Thanks in advance. EPHS612

 

[cruisin]

No advantage to a clean install other than to remove some old configuration files for unused apps. macOS just by itself is reasonably fast, but apps like Chrome or Photoshop will use as much performance as they can. Generally if an app is misbehaving reinstalling the app will be the same as reinstalling macOS and then installing the app, unless you have a crazy combination of apps in your device. You can use search to locate old apps and can use something like Disk Inventory X to locate your large files. A clean install costs you nothing except for time, so if you feel you need it then go ahead. Use this time to check your backups, if something only exists in one spot it is not actually a backup.

I personally gave up on an internal bootcamp install, as sometimes a macOS reinstall would cause problems. I currently use an external SSD for my bootcamp and if I need to reinstall macOS then at least bootcamp will be fine, not to mention the extra free space from pushing bootcamp to a second drive. In theory you can use Disk Utility to make an image and then if bootcamp is destroyed you can put it back, but I was only somewhat successful with this (hence my current solution). There are also apps that promise to copy your bootcamp and put it back, but I never tried any.

If you go into recovery mode (hold R when turning on the Mac) you can delete the Mac side and then reinstall macOS (but it will install the version that came with the machine, in this case likely El Capitan). You would then need to update to Mojave separately. You can make your own USB install drive with Mojave but it requires Terminal and the Mojave installer and a 16 GB flash drive. Then you would hold alt and boot from the flash drive. See: https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT201372

 

[EPHS612]

cruising, thanks for taking the time to leave detailed information. You gave me a couple of ideas to consider, including an external bootcamp instead of internal. Thanks again.