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Reinstallation of OS X

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Wirenut

macrumors regular
Original poster
Nov 6, 2016
198
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I haven't reinstalled an OS since the days of using Windows and it was a bit of a pain to get all the drivers right.

Today I use an early 2014 MacBook Air and would like to reinstall the OS, if for no other reason than for my own OCD. Over the last 2 years I have only used 2 programs so installing them will be a snap. My only concern is all the drivers and everything else. But I believe that is all built into the OS, is that correct?

What do I do to reinstall the OS?
 
The details really depend on what you want to do. But if all you want to start over with a clean OS install then here it goes.
For quicker setup use a USB drive with the installer as described in the article below.
If you don’t have a spare USB drive just follow the recovery instructions or Network Recovery to reinstall macOS as described in the article.

https://www.howtogeek.com/186860/HO...YOUR-DRIVE-AND-CREATE-USB-INSTALLATION-MEDIA/
 
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Before you go through all the trouble of a re-install, just wondering...

Are the apps you use not working right?
Is the OS particularly sluggish or unresponsive?
What indications do you have that an OS re-install is required?

There's no point in "re-installing" the OS if it's working well enough...
 
Weaselboy said:
Unless you have some odd third party hardware, yes, all the drivers will be included.

Just command-option-r boot to Internet recovery and erase the drive with Disk Utility then reinstall the OS and you are done. No need to make a USB key.
Click to expand...
Silly questyion, but what is the difference between Command - R like the article says and Command - Option - R like you mentioned?
 
Comand-R will go into the Recovery Partition on the internal HDD

Command-Option-R will boot into network recovery which will download everything from the web
 
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Wirenut said:
Silly questyion, but what is the difference between Command - R like the article says and Command - Option - R like you mentioned?
Click to expand...
By doing command-option-r you are booting to a network image downloaded from the Internet, and cached in RAM, so you are not booted to the internal drive at all. That way you can format the entire drive.
 
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Thanks for the info guys.

gvasco, Using the USB drive is just a little faster? Or is there any other difference?
 
Wirenut said:
Thanks for the info guys.

gvasco, Using the USB drive is just a little faster? Or is there any other difference?
Click to expand...
Before you can make the USB drive, you need to download the whole OS anyway, so unless you just want to have the USB drive around for later use, it is sort of a waste of time. Actually takes longer if you factor in the time it takes to make the USB key.
 
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Thanks again.

I made my Documents folder into the iCloud Drive folder. If I reinstalled the OS right now, would all of those files still be there on the new installation if I set the same folder to be the iCloud Drive folder?

FWIW, I do have many backups and will make one right before.

How about the Photo's album? I have those saved across the iCloud so I can access them on all my devices. I assume they stay there even after I wipe my computer that they are based out of?
 
If you erase the drive, then reinstall the OS, all that stuff will be gone. But if you then turn iCloud Photos and iCloud Drive back on, it would put the data back.

Just to be safe thought, make sure you also have all that data backed up to an external drive also.
 
This weekend I down graded the Mac mini to El Capitan via usb, and upgrading an old ssd on the MBAir as I type, and there is no speed difference.
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Weaselboy said:
If you erase the drive, then reinstall the OS, all that stuff will be gone. But if you then turn iCloud Photos and iCloud Drive back on, it would put the data back.
.
Click to expand...

Can my Mac open a document in pages on my iCloud using El Capitan?
 
Weaselboy said:
If you erase the drive, then reinstall the OS, all that stuff will be gone. But if you then turn iCloud Photos and iCloud Drive back on, it would put the data back.

Just to be safe thought, make sure you also have all that data backed up to an external drive also.
Click to expand...
One more question. Which file system should I use for the Mac computer, APFS?

Should I also use APFS for the USB thumbdrives I use to backup the data?
 
I would use Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and if you are on a compatible system using High Sierra, the installer will convert it to APFS for you. For now, I would stick to Mac OS Extended for backup drives also just so you can access the data from another, older Mac if you want to.
 
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Weaselboy said:
I would use Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and if you are on a compatible system using High Sierra, the installer will convert it to APFS for you. For now, I would stick to Mac OS Extended for backup drives also just so you can access the data from another, older Mac if you want to.
Click to expand...
Thanks again for the help.

I have a question about this just for my own curiosity. I have 2 USB thumb drives, both Kingston DTSE9. One is 16 gig and other other is 32 gig. When using the Disk utility in OS X I chose to erase them to reformat them. The 32 gig drive only gave me 4 choices of files systems (Fat, xFat, OS Extended (Journaled) & case sensitive) but the 16 gig drive gave me about 10 options including 4 APFS options.

I am just wondering why if they are the same drives?
 
I will be reinstalling MacOS on my wife's MBP. I would like the MB to be able to access network shares on windows computers. Would you recommend Mac OS Extended?
 
All done, it worked well!

I can definitely see a difference, those little split second freezes and lag are gone, the ghosting effect when going back to a reloaded tab as well. I also just like knowing that it’s clean and there is 30 extra gigs of hard drive space.

I had one issue that is worrying me. After the installing of the OS and apps, and after Photos and iCloud Drive downloaded everything, I rebooted and used the computer without issue for a few hours. I left and came back to the computer to find it locked when the monitor shut off, logged in and went to the Users preference to turn that off (it’s actually elsewhere, but that’s doesn’t matter) and while looking around (I had just unlocked the lock at the bottom of the dialog box) the screen went black with some type of faint circular icon in the middle and some text. It said something like “something went wrong and the computer must reboot, press a key or wait a few seconds”.

When it came back on it did the usually thing when it’s not shutdown correctly, but everything worked fine.

I have no idea what this could be. One thing that I know is that Time Machine still hadn’t started backing up because it said that File Vault was still doing something. Could that be part of the problem? Anyone have an idea what happened or if I now have an unreliable installation?? :(:(
 
OK, thanks buddy :)

One other thing that happened was that all but the 5 most recent calls I received had been deleted from the Recent Call list in my iPhone. :eek:o_O

The only thing that I can think of is some type of screwup via Facetime. After reinstalling the OS on my MacBook, it set both Messages and Facetime up with my phone number. I logged out of both and shut them off. So I assume that caused whatever glitch to erase most of the numbers from my recent call list.

Not a big deal, I just figured I would put this out there in case someone else had this happen and searches for it.
 
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