How to reformat MacBook Pro, with some specifications

[jgiannis]

MacBook Pro 2012 non-retina

I want to reformat the Mac, but there are some specific precautions I want to address before doing so.

- I have Windows 7 installed via boocamp partition. I do not want this partition to be affected when I reformat theMac side. I do not want to erase or reinstall Windows. Is this possible?
- I am running Yosemite. I want to reformat directly into El Capitan. Is this possible?
- In my iTunes, I have a couple of old iPad backups. How do I backup the backups before I reformat?

 

[chas_m]

Thanks for letting us know the model of Mac we're talking about. I have that exact machine.

I hate to be nosy, but why the reformat? In the Mac world, that is a really extreme step and rarely if ever required.

To answer your questions:

1. You can erase the partition for the Mac side only, yes. You must be booted from a different drive of course, so I'd strongly recommend making a clone backup using Chronosync, Carbon Copy Cloner, or SuperDuper to an external drive (preferably USB 3.0 or Thunderbolt, for speed reasons).

2. If you take the suggestion in Step One, you'll boot from the cloned external, download the El Cap installer from the Mac App Store, and direct it to install on the now-erased Mac partition, so the answer there is yes. Once that's done, you'll boot from the newly-fresh El Capitan drive, and Migration Assistant will come in during the setup process and offer to transfer all your stuff -- including those iPad backups -- to the El Cap drive.

 

[jgiannis]

Thank you for the reply. I want to reformat just to get the feeling of the clean slate, plus it will remove doubts about my system running at optimal potential. There have been tons of programs that I installed, deleted, or don't use anymore, and sometimes I feel like remnants of these programs are clogging up my machine. Maybe I'm right, maybe not. If I reformat, I will remove the uncertainty, and then install only those which I felt were essential. Also, ever since I upgraded to Yosemite, my machine is super slow in booting up. Hopefully El Capitan will be ok. But I heard that it's better to do a fresh reformat directly into the new OS rather than just "updating" into the new OS. Again, I don't know if it's true, but I think it is worth a try.

 

[harryb2448]

You are hanging on to your old Windows practices. How full is your hard drive and how much memory is installed? Did you install Windows 7 64bit?