How to perform clean Mavericks install on MBA

[Akuratyde]

Can someone please tell me the best way to perform a clean install of OS X Mavericks on my Air? I'd like to format the drive and only have to install Mavericks without any previous OS's. What is the best way to accomplish this? Thanks in advance.

 

[DisplacedMic]

Can someone please tell me the best way to perform a clean install of OS X Mavericks on my Air? I'd like to format the drive and only have to install Mavericks without any previous OS's. What is the best way to accomplish this? Thanks in advance.

well, step 1 is pay 0 money

i haven't tried it yet but isn't there an option to do exactly that when you run the update? (remove previous OSs, not format the drive I mean- to do that you'd have to go into recovery)

 

[Akuratyde]

if I go into recovery and format the drive won't I have to reinstall Lion since that's what was running on the Air when I bought it? Or should I install Mavericks, then go to recovery and format the drive? That way Mavericks isn't being installed on top of previous OS's.

 

[NMF]

The latest beta release of Lion DiskMaker was updated to support the OS X Mavericks GM, so it should work just fine with the official public release. You can use it to create a bootable Mavericks USB stick (8GB or larger) and boot from that to do a "fresh" install. You can grab the latest beta release here.

Or simply download "Install OS X Mavericks.app" from the Mac App Store (don't run it, quit with CMD-Q if it auto-runs) and follow tywebb13's directions from this post to accomplish the same thing without downloading Lion DiskMaker. Doing it this way ensures that you'll install the Mavericks recovery partition as well. This is the method I'll be using within the next hour or so, so I'll report back when it's done.

This is better than osxdaily's method (which should only be used for DP1 anyway, not DP4 or the GM):

To make a bootable USB of the GM, use this method:

Your 8 GB USB drive should be called Untitled and formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled). The installer should be called Install OS X Mavericks.app and should be in your Applications folder.

Run this in terminal and wait about 20 minutes:

sudo /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ Mavericks.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/Untitled --applicationpath /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ Mavericks.app --nointeraction

You should see something like this:

Erasing Disk: 0%... 10%... 20%... 100%...
Copying installer files to disk...
Copy complete.
Making disk bootable...
Copying boot files...
Copy complete.
Done.

You can then boot up from the USB by holding down the option key, then install the GM from the USB.

This is probably going to be the same for the public release.

Note that this will also install a recovery partition (which osxdaily's method doesn't do).

 

[Akuratyde]

Excellent, thank you for the reply. This is exactly what I was looking for.

 

[mvmanolov]

got it!
did it!
Done

 

[radiohead14]

The latest beta release of Lion DiskMaker was updated to support the OS X Mavericks GM, so it should work just fine with the official public release. You can use it to create a bootable Mavericks USB stick (8GB or larger) and boot from that to do a "fresh" install. You can grab the latest beta release here.

Or simply download "Install OS X Mavericks.app" from the App Store (don't run it) and follow tywebb13's directions from this post to accomplish the same thing without downloading Lion DiskMaker (this is what I'm doing). Doing it this way ensures that you'll install a Mavericks recovery partition as well.

thank you. and will this replace the Lion recovery partition completely with the Mavericks one?

 

[NMF]

thank you. and will this replace the Lion recovery partition completely with the Mavericks one?

Yep. If you want to be safe just use Disk Utility to reformat your Mac's hard drive after you boot from the USB stick.

This is a great time to rename your boot drive "Mac SSD" as well. It always bugged me that Apple referred to my SSD storage as an "HD."

 

[radiohead14]

Yep. If you want to be safe just use Disk Utility to reformat your Mac's hard drive after you boot from the USB stick.

This is a great time to rename your boot drive "Mac SSD" as well. It always bugged me that Apple referred to my SSD storage as an "HD."

really? weird, since mine says "Apple SSD SM128C" (i believe SM notes the Samsung SSD)

 

[NMF]

really? weird, since mine says "Apple SSD SM128C" (i believe SM notes the Samsung SSD)

Unless you manually changed it yourself, your boot partition is named "Macintosh HD." All Macs ship like that.

In other news, I updated to Mavericks using the USB method I linked to above. No issues. I'm loving the new Safari!

 

[thebrobrah]

how necessary is this.??

i just installed over mountain lion...dont see any problems..

 

[ritmomundo]

The latest beta release of Lion DiskMaker was updated to support the OS X Mavericks GM, so it should work just fine with the official public release. You can use it to create a bootable Mavericks USB stick (8GB or larger) and boot from that to do a "fresh" install. You can grab the latest beta release here.

Or simply download "Install OS X Mavericks.app" from the Mac App Store (don't run it, quit with CMD-Q if it auto-runs) and follow tywebb13's directions from this post to accomplish the same thing without downloading Lion DiskMaker. Doing it this way ensures that you'll install the Mavericks recovery partition as well. This is the method I'll be using within the next hour or so, so I'll report back when it's done.

Thank you very much for those SUPER EASY instructions. I didn't use the bootable drive to do a clean install (maybe some day in the future), but I did use it to install Mavericks on our other computers (5 total in our house!) without having to do a 5.3GB download on each system. Saved me a bunch of time.

 

[Akuratyde]

how necessary is this.??

i just installed over mountain lion...dont see any problems..

It's not necessary, but it can increase performance and free up space.