Safe way to format my hard drive

[mikejpeace]

Hello, someone help me to format my mac hard drive in safe way. I have data in my hard drive. Is there any way to format hard drive with out data loss?
I have done lot of study for that but i am confused what to do what not to do. If it can be possible so please tell me. It will save my lots of efforts and time and if it is not possible so which is the best way to do that ?

 

[chscag]

Welcome to our forums.

Formatting any hard drive will destroy its data. If you wish to format your Mac's hard drive, you will need to first backup the data that's on it. Since you did not tell us which Mac you have and what version of macOS it's running, we will assume that you are using a version of macOS that includes the Time Machine application. You can use Time Machine to do a full backup of your Mac to an external hard drive. Then after formatting, you will need to install a copy of macOS and restore your data using the Time Machine backup you made.

Now, having said all that... why do you want to format your hard drive? Is there some problem with your Mac?

 

[Rod]

Yes why would you want to reformat? Usually a reinstallation of the Operating System is ample for most instances unless you need to erase the hard drive. The only time I needed to do that in the recent past was to remove some partitions I had created with Boot Camp to run Windows.
Reinstalling the OS can be done without losing data although I would strongly advise a backup as suggested by chscag above.

 

[pigoo3]

Thread moved to better area (other hardware).

- Nick