resetting everything?

[fr3n2y]

Hello,

I have just bought a new MBP and will no longer use my iMac as my main computer.

I want to wipe everything from my iMac apart from my itunes and iphoto libraries. Basically put it back to how it was when I bought it but keeping the above.

I updated to Mountain Lion via the app store recently but do not have a disc for it?

I am a fairly new Mac user, from my pc days it was a simple back up files, chuck in the xp disc, install, then copy everything back to it. I'm hoping its even easier on a mac?

I have an external 500gb usb harddrive that is doing nothing so could copy files to that, I do not have time machine or anything else.

Could someone point me in the right direction to how I would go about doing this?

Thanks in advance


Mel

 

[fr3n2y]

anybody?

 

[Tankmaze]

its quite easy if you have an external HD, your external HD is 500 gb which is the same as the imac HD ? so just setup the time machine and choose the ext HD.

after that use the migration assistant in the mbp and choose the source from the time machine ext HD.

good luck.

 

[forty2j]

Time Machine is an application. It's on your Mac already. You don't have a Time Capsule, but you don't need that to use Time Machine. Time Capsule is basically a WiFi router and an external hard drive in one box. You can hook your external hard drive up and Time Machine to it.

Once you're backed up, you can redownload ML from your purchases in the App Store, and select "clean install" (rather than "upgrade") when you install it. This will turn it into fresh computer. When it boots up after the ML install, it will ask if you have stuff on another Mac or on a Time Machine backup you'd like to bring over.. you can then select your user profile and anything else you want to keep.

 

[mmomega]

If you have an external HDD and somewhat fast internet the process is very simple.
Backup what you want to preserve and reboot while holding the Option key down and select the Reinstall OSX partition.
Use Disk utility to erase the drive and reinstall OSX.

 

[tech0925]

its quite easy if you have an external HD, your external HD is 500 gb which is the same as the imac HD ? so just setup the time machine and choose the ext HD.

after that use the migration assistant in the mbp and choose the source from the time machine ext HD.

good luck.

This is the tactic that I use. It is very easy to do.

 

[mojothemonkey]

The rumors about this gentleman using his iMac for photos and music are TRUE.