Reformat My Macbook Pro Without Losing All My Apps

Ok well about week ago I bought my very first ever Mac. It’s a 17” Macbook Pro 2.33GHz, with 3GB’s of Ram, and a 200GB hard drive. I bought it used off eBay from a professional photographer. It’s in awesome condition (as new as it gets) and came pre installed with the full Adobe CS4 suit, Microsoft office 08, iLife, etc. It’s a beast lol.

I own a pretty established skateboard/fingerboard manufacturing company. I manufacturer all kinds of products like decks, bearing wheels, hardware, apparel, etc. With this company we do a lot of graphical design work, we create new deck graphics every month, come out with new catalogues’ every season, make adds, clothing, etc…And I used to let my graphics designer do it all while I run the company and make the products. But now I’m starting to get into the designing aspect of things and that’s why I bought this Macbook(as well as other things of course), but mainly because it had all the software I’ll need to get started.

But here’s my problem. Like I said the guy I bought the MBP from is a professional photographer. Which means he has over at least 30,000 pictures on this thing. He’s messed with the folders, there’s random stuff everywhere, this thing is a mess. I don’t know what’s what, I don’t know what I can delete, or what I need to keep, I don’t know what’s apple stuff and what’s his, I’m so lost. I’m completely new to Mac’s so I have absolutely no idea how to clean it up.

Basically all I want to know is if there is some way, any way that I can completely reformat everything, the hard rive, the folders, everything back to factory settings, like I just bought it from apple, where everything is untouched. I know it sounds simple right? But here’s the kicker, I want to reformat everything but…… I want to do it without removing any of that software. The software that I mentioned like Adobe CS4, etc was the whole reason I went with this one, so the software must go untouched. Mainly because I don’t have the serials, or the install disks, if I un install an application like Photoshop, there’s no getting it back, so the most important thing is what I ever I do, it doesn’t mess with my apps…

So is there anything I can do?

Well you could use SuperDuper and make a bootable back on an External HD <which is good practice anyway> then copy stuff back to newly formatted drive as you need it.

Although this may not be the answer you are looking for. If you have adobe photoshop and the other programs that came with the laptop and the stuff you got you could always just reformat the comoputer and then reinstall the programs. It takes less time than a Windows pc (in my opinion). So it may be worth the trouble

You could also probably copy the applications you need from the applications folder then copy there corresponding stuff from a folder called library which generally i believe holds important information for apps. Someone else may be able to tell you if this works, or if i'm correct. But i think it works that way

Good Luck! Any other questions please ask. And welcome to the forums.

NOTE: Thread moved to appropriate forum. Not just anything goes in Anything Goes

If you don't have the software discs or serial numbers, then you don't own the software. The seller is likely using the same software on another machine, which means continuing to use it is legally dubious.

Since we don't discuss illegal activity on this forum, this thread is now closed.