More importantly, I am assuming that you have tested the integrity of your backup(s). I’m assuming that all of your important data has been backed up, already. Tip: There are plenty of tutorials on Mactuts+ to help you backup your data. This ensures that you have two separate backups, thereby halving the chances of data loss.

I recommend taking a Time Machine backup and, separately, cloning your hard drive. The instructions that I will give, in this tutorial, will have catastrophic consequences if you have data that you need to keep and do not backup first. I can not emphasise this strongly enough. It may be that it is cathartic to get rid of a load of applications and just install the ones that you really need, or it may be that you are selling the machine – or passing it on – and you want to revert the machine to factory settings.īy doing this, you ensure that none of your personal data remains and the recipient is in receipt of a Mac with an operating system that is as fresh as when it first left the factory.

There may be times that you do wish to start again, from scratch. In this tutorial, I will show you how to reformat the hard drive in your Mac and reinstall OS X for that factory fresh finish. There may be occasions, however, when you want to reformat your Mac's hard drive. You will find that OS X is very stable in comparison, it defragments its hard drive on an ongoing basis and it does not get bogged down with additional software in the way that a Windows machine does. Unlike personal computers that run Microsoft Windows, it should not be necessary to completely reformat the hard drive, once a year, to reinstall the operating system.

How to format mac hd