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eljeyy

macrumors newbie
Original poster
May 15, 2015
13
0
Hey there.
So I am selling my mac and I thought I would delete all the files off (other than applications) to make it clean. I moved like 10,000 files into my trash (everything under the 'all my files' tab). I was hesitant to delete as I thought deleted all those files might effect performance or be an important file just for the mac to operate.
I then found that there's a much easier way to do what I was trying to do (creating a new admin account and deleting your old one). but now all these files are in my trash, alot of them dont allow my to 'put back' so my question is this. If I
A) Create the new admin account and delete my old one with all the trashed files will my computer still run fine.
or
B) If I just empty my trash am I going to run into any issues?

any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
LJ
 
I need to keep all of my applications.

And I still need to know if there's any problems with having all those items in my trash or If they okay to be deleted.

thanks,
 
You will want to do the factory restore as suggested above.

If you do a backup on an external drive of all the applications you wish to keep, it will be a simple process to copy them back to the Mac after the restoration. The factory restore will provide assurance that all your personal data and files will be removed.
 
Okay, so to be clear, there is definitely no issue with having all of my files including .gif, .php, ect in my trash while I do the factory reset?
 
I need to keep all of my applications.

And I still need to know if there's any problems with having all those items in my trash or If they okay to be deleted.

thanks,

I don't know what you moved into the trash, so I can't tell you if it's ok to delete them.

If you're selling your Mac, the safest way to protect your data is to do a restore and delete everything off of it. Leaving the software on the computer when you sell it to someone else is probably against the EUL that you agreed to when you installed the software, so....

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Okay, so to be clear, there is definitely no issue with having all of my files including .gif, .php, ect in my trash while I do the factory reset?

If you're doing a factory reset, it doesn't matter. It'll delete EVERYTHING and then do a fresh install of the operating system.
 
Okay, So with the applications, such as FCP, Photoshop, Word ect. All I need to do is drag and drop the app files onto an external disk and then move them back on after the factory reset?
 
Okay, So with the applications, such as FCP, Photoshop, Word ect. All I need to do is drag and drop the app files onto an external disk and then move them back on after the factory reset?

Yes, correct.
 
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