erasing my Mac OS

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Hi

I would like to erase my mac air completely, but would like to leave the operating system the way it is. I can not upgrade the OS since my mac is to slow for the new one. It presently runs High Sierra. What is the best way?

Thank you for any help.
 
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Thank you for replying. Yes, I would like to erase all except my OS. I am afraid of reinstalling OS. I don't have any CDs and am afraid it will download the newest OS, but my laptop is to slow for it. It only has 4GB of RAM
 
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May I ask why you want to do this? Without any of your data, the machine won't be of much use to you. If you are planning to sell or give it away, there is more to do than just erase it.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201065
 
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It's my wife's laptop. It's almost full (250GB). I wanna start using it, clean it etc, but keep the operating system there.
 

Raz0rEdge

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Since the machine is running High Sierra, if you go into the macOS Recovery Console as suggested in Post #2 above, you can do a erase of the hard drive and re-install High Sierra from the Internet. This will NOT download Mojave or any other OS. The recovery console ONLY downloads the version you already have.
 
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Hi
Thanx for all your help. It worked out nicely and I have a clean computer now. One think I want to ask though, I lost my iMovie application. After re-installing the system it's gone. Any idea if I can get it back somehow? Can it be downloaded?
 
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Did you make a backup? If so, you can restore it from there. Otherwise I don't think it's available any more.
 
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You should be able to get it from the App Store.
 
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Good! I had thought they took it down. Maybe not.
 

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