Installing El Capitan on new iMac

[BagshotRow]

I'm relatively new to OS X. I bought a new iMac (late 2013) that came with OS X 10.10 Yosemite. I want to do a "clean install" of OS X 10.11 El Capitan. Here is what I was planning to do. Is this the best way? Thanks.

1) Download El Capitan and make a bootable USB stick.
2) Boot from El Capitan USB.
3) Run Disk Utilities and erase all partitions and the entire hard drive.
4) Install El Capitan to the hard drive.

 

[rkaufmann87]

I'm relatively new to OS X. I bought a new iMac (late 2013) that came with OS X 10.10 Yosemite. I want to do a "clean install" of OS X 10.11 El Capitan. Here is what I was planning to do. Is this the best way? Thanks.

1) Download El Capitan and make a bootable USB stick.
2) Boot from El Capitan USB.
3) Run Disk Utilities and erase all partitions and the entire hard drive.
4) Install El Capitan to the hard drive.

Yup that should work.

 

[countryside]

I'm relatively new to OS X. I bought a new iMac (late 2013) that came with OS X 10.10 Yosemite. I want to do a "clean install" of OS X 10.11 El Capitan. Here is what I was planning to do. Is this the best way? Thanks.

1) Download El Capitan and make a bootable USB stick.
2) Boot from El Capitan USB.
3) Run Disk Utilities and erase all partitions and the entire hard drive.
4) Install El Capitan to the hard drive.

That sounds 100% correct.

 

[BagshotRow]

Thanks for the replies guys. I want to ask a slight variation on my question... Since my Mac is essentially brand new, is it just a as good to let the App Store upgrade to El Capitan instead of going through the "clean install" process? If they are essentially the same, maybe I'll just let the App Store update it cuz its easier. I'm new to Mac OS X, coming from Windows 7, and I might be overthinking this... Thanks again...

 

[Jan.K]

I would recommend that you update the 10.11 installation directly to 10.11.3 via the Combo Update. Much easier/faster than installing the updates via the AppStore. Download here: https://support.apple.com/kb/DL1859

 

[maflynn]

Why not just install it as Apple intended to do, i.e., download and upgrade. I could be wrong but by installing it via the thumb drive don't you lose the recovery partition? I think that was the case with older versions, I'm not sure if that's still the case.