Nuke and Pave best practices

[Shamgar]

I think the time has come to nuke and pave the system drive in my sister's computer. Too many little bits of old non-functional software and extensions have accumulated. What is the best procedure these days for installing a fresh OS and reconfiguring? If I clone the drive, reformat it, and install El Capitan, how much can I safely use migration assistant and how much needs to be manually reset?

 

[Ebenezum]

Depends on the software that is installed. Since you know some of it isn't working properly its risky to copy everything.

If you wish to make a true "clean" install you can use migration assistant to move user accounts, everything else you have to manually copy from the clone. If you use migration assistant to copy everything its possible that you have problems due to incompatible software, extensions, etc.

Personally I would wait some months until El Capitan is updated to .2 or .3 version because current version has too many bugs. Its possible that your sister don't have issues but I wouldn't take any changes.