How to Perform a Clean Install of Mojave ?

[ProfessorChaos]

Hello ,

I have been having problems with my iMac ( 3 GHz. , i5 , 21.5 2017 ) I have posted another thread on the issues I am having , however I am stuck .
It was suggested that I try booting the Os from an External Drive , however I don't have an extra one to do this with , I was going to try and boot from a USB drive , but no matter what I try the computer will no recognize the USB as a bootable drive .
The last option that I can see is to reinstall the OS and see if that fixes the issues , if that don't work I am going to have to haul the iMac off to the Apple Store .

I have been looking at https://macdaddy.io/duplicate/ to duplicate my Hard Drive so I can put in on my external drive so I can perform a clean install .

Is this method a good option ?

I am not that failure with doing this and don't want to delete anything important , however I do have Time Machine turned on and its using that external drive . I don't want to restore using Time Machine in case the problem I am having exist in the back up .

Thanks for any help you can suggest .
John

 

[MacInWin]

John, her is an article at Apple on how to do a clean install of Mojave:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204904

For duplicating the internal drive I recommend either Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper! to do that. I think there are 30 day versions of both, but you can search for them to find out. If you don't want to use them, you don't need the software you linked, just use Finder to select/copy/paste the files/folders/drives you want to copy. Once you have a clean install and know whether or not it's working, you can use TM or Finder or CCC or SD to copy back what you copied over to the external.

 

[IWT]

Hi and thanks for your post.

I'm not comfortable with the method suggested in your linked article. Moreover, you don't really want to use your Time Machine External Hard Drive for any additional purpose.

If it's just a question of reinstalling the OS, you can achieve this in a different way.

Reboot your Mac holding down the Command and R keys. This will take you into Recovery Mode.

From there, there are several options offered, the first, I think, is "reinstall OS". If you choose this, it will reinstall the current OS on your Mac whilst leaving all your data intact.

We normally advise a Backup "just in case"; but you seem to have that anyway via Time Machine.

This is probably the simplest thing to start with.

Ian

 

[IWT]

Jake and I were obviously typing at the same time. What Jake recommends is, correctly, a "clean install". My suggestion is not "clean" but may be worth a try, and is easier.....

Ian

 

[Randy B. Singer]

I have been looking at https://macdaddy.io/duplicate/ to duplicate my Hard Drive so I can put in on my external drive so I can perform a clean install .

Is this method a good option ?

I just recently put up an entire Web page devoted to this. Have a look and see if it helps.

Upgrading To The Very Latest Macintosh Operating System
Upgrading To The Very Latest Macintosh Operating System

 

[krs]

Randy,

I like the webpage you linked to - specifically the description about a clean install.

However, I think it would be a bit clearer if the nicely flowing article was not interrupted by this big chunk in the middle with all the various links.
Maybe just one link to point to this grouping at the end of that section like you did for other areas.

 

[Randy B. Singer]

Randy,

I like the webpage you linked to - specifically the description about a clean install.

Thank you!

However, I think it would be a bit clearer if the nicely flowing article was not interrupted by this big chunk in the middle with all the various links.
Maybe just one link to point to this grouping at the end of that section like you did for other areas.

The links are directly relevant to what is being discussed in the article right at the point that they appear. Putting them at the end would be a disconnect.

 

[krs]

Thank you!



The links are directly relevant to what is being discussed in the article right at the point that they appear. Putting them at the end would be a disconnect.

Well, as a reader I respectfully disagree,

If it was just a single link it would be allright - there are just too many and for most readers they are irrelevant since anyone who has used a Mac for even a short while would know about them.
But that's just my opinion -as I said, when I first read that article I wondered where the rest of it was when I got to the section where all the links start.