How to format my Mac and reinstall OS X Yosemite?

Hi! Older to reinstall osX do the steps this.
Restart your mac, and wen you hear the sound startup system press and hold commend and r keys for a haf me nit and after this tern on voiceovefr.
In os10 utilities chuse "disk utilities" interact with this and chuse this.
Dpress commend up erro and chuse macintosh hd and bchuse delete disk. Back to osX utilities and chuse install os10.

If you download from the AppStore and let the installer reboot, it will preserve your data. To erase and reinstall OS X, use the process described by the other commenters, minus the cloning if you don't have any important data. Start up in OS X utilities and erase your disk, called Macintosh HD by default, and then install OS X on your freshly erased volume.

When you first start up in OS X utilities, there is a table with four options, restore from Time Machine backup, reinstall OS X, get help online, and Disk Utility. Navigate as you would other tables in OS X and click continue to open it. From there, it should behave like the Disk Utility on your startup disk.

The DiskMaker X app allows you to make a bootable OS X installer. I would recommend using a USB drive over a disk if possible, as larger sizes of them are more readily available and also perform faster. You will need to download the OS X Yosemite installer from the Mac AppStore. Once you have the installer and the DiskMaker app, follow the prompts to make a boot disk. At the end, it will give you the option to automatically start up from it. From there, you can access the disk utility to erase and reformat your harddrive and reinstall OS X. Here's a link. http://diskmakerx.com

When you boot from your external drive, you are actually loading the entire installer. This means that it will take less time because it just has to read data off the external disk and install the operating system to your internal drive. When you press command r, you are taken into a recovery image. The disadvantage is that the recovery image has to download a full copy of OS X from Apple which could take a long time depending on your internet connection speed.

You can download it using the recovery partition, or you can install it by downloading it from the Mac App Store first, then burning a .iso file hidden in the app file you downloaded. DiskMaker X essentially does this, but I prefer to do it manually. In my case, it's faster to download it from the recovery partition after I have erased my Macintosh HD partition, as it also takes time to burn then start up from the DVD. IF you prefer to download the installer from a running OS X partition, I'd recommend using a USB flash drive since that's faster, but the difference really isn't worth writing home about.

Also worth noting is that if you do decide to use the recovery partition, connecting to Wi-Fi from the status menu may crash VoiceOver repeatedly. I do not know if Apple has fixed this finally, but it also does not occur on all computers. If you find that it crashes for you when connecting to Wi-Fi, do the following:

1. Go to the Utilities menu with VO-M, then Vo-right until you get to it.
2. Press VO-down arrow until you get to Terminal, then Vo-Space to open it.
3. Once Terminal opens, type the following exactly as written and substitute network name and WIFI_PASSWORD for the appropriate settings: networksetup -setairportnetwork en0 Network name WIFI_PASSWORD
4. Once you press return, you will be connected after a little while. Feel free to press Command-Q once this happens and proceed with the install.

Obviously if you do not use Wi-Fi to do this but use ethernet, disregard.

Keep in mind that you can actually start VoiceOVer when the process begins and your computer restarts, just give it a little while before you do so to make sure everything is running smoothly first. Although, I hear some people can't get VoiceOver on during the process. I didn't have that issue on my 2008 MacBook, 2011 iMac or my 2012 MacBook Air however. IF you can't turn it on, just give it a while. It can take a little bit.

Hi!

The recovery partition just straight up installs it for you once it tells you that it's about to reboot. Once this happens, you just wait until it reboots a few times.

If you don't format your disk first from Disk utility, be aware that it will instead upgrade your installation from a previous version. If you already have Yosemite on your partition, it will overwrite the installation but migrate your settings. If you want to have a totally clean installation, you will have to format it using Disk Utility from the recovery partition.

This method is a lot easier than bothering to make bootable media unless you need to install it on multiple macs or for some reason your recovery partition is failing. It is, however, rather useful if you do not want to use this partition and download it again if you have reinstalled before. In this case, though, you will probably have to install an update after the initial installation, so you can argue which method is faster in the end. There is no definitive answer on that. Also of note is that in most cases, wiping your recovery HD is not required. The recovery partition is updated either by updates through the App Store separate from OS X updates, or along with new major releases of OS X.

When you format a hard drive, you are NOT marking every file on the drive as ready for deletion. You are creating an entirely brand new file allocation table. This means that when you are finished with the format, neither the operating system, NOR the hard drive is aware of any previous files or their locations on the hard drive. Therefore, the hard drive continues to use the storage as though it were new from the factory. There is absolutely NO LOSS IN PERFORMANCE by re-partitioning and re-formatting a hard drive vs doing a 7 pass wipe on the hard drive and then re-partitioning / re-installing. Also, there is NO RISK of confusing your data with the "old data' thats on the drive, since that data has been orphaned and there is no way for the operating system nor the hard drive to accidentally stumble accross the old data and somehow be affected by it. No, the hard drive will simply plow right over any hard drive bits that it knows are available for use per the re-partition and re-format. So this notion that the old data somehow makes things "dirty" is complete rubbish. I defy you to find me any credible research done in this area which would suggest that a multi-pass wipe of a hard drive is in ANY WAY more beneficial to a user instead of just doing a re-partition / re-format - OTHER THAN THE INDENDED USE OF MULTI-PASS WIPES - which is to erradicate the hard drive of sensitive, or personal information, since a hard drive cannot be scoured by third party utilities and have its files re-assembled through special software once a multi-pass wipe has been done. But that is the ONLY benefit to a multi-pass wipe - the complete removal of private or sensitive files. (Notice that 7 pass wipes are referred to as DOD wipes - that is the Department of Defense) - why did they get involved in multi-pass wiping? Because they were concerned about a computers performance?  NO! So they could completely erradicate a hard drive of classified information (although highly classified computers get incinerated after the 7-pass wipe).

In fact, that old data is so far removed from the computing environment, that in order to actually get to the data, you have to purchase special software that utilizes special non-standard commands within the hard drive itself to go and read every single data bit on the hard drive, then look for patterns that match known file patterns and if it happens to see some of the magnetic bits organized in these patterns, the software can then re-construct those old files onto a separate hard drive. Notice it's not even possible to re-activate the files on the current hard drive because the files were NOT marked for deletion ... they were abandoned and left for dead.

For those of you who remember using casette tapes, 8-tracks or reel to reels for recording and listening to music, remember that tapes had magnetic pieces laid out onto the tape and as the music played it would vibrate the magnet in the heads and those magnetic fields would re-arrange the bits on the tape which could then run back over the same head and listen to the music you just recorded. Now remember it used to be advantageous to use an electromagnet to erase your tapes before recording over them again. This is because over time, the magnetic bits became more stubborn and more difficult to rearrange so that if you recorded music over previously recorded music you may sometimes hear the old music very faintly in the background. Hard drives are far more Advanced than cassette tapes machines, so when a hard drive abandons previously recorded data it will go back out and use those magnetic bits again as it needs to without ever hearing about or seeing or knowing anything about the previously written data.

Therefore, when it comes to just every day computer usage , your system will run like it did when it was new witth a simple re-partition and re-foamat of the hard drive followed by a reinstall of the operating system. And the process of partitioning and formatting is mere minutes compared to meree DAYS or WEEKS doing a 7 pass wipe. It blows my mind how much time people waste because of simple ignorance which could be eliminated completely with a litlle knowlede and understanding of how things work under the hood.

Just to re-iterate where the poster of this thread is completely wrong, the data is not merely "marked for deletion" when you perform a re-partition and a re-format, the data is literally orphaned, and is no longer real to the operating system ... its not been marked at all because its technically not even there, since all of the previous indexing records were wiped clean and created new from scratch ... its just a bunch of magnetic bits on a spinning platter that are arranged in weird patterns that have ZERO impact on the usage of that hard drive. So a muli-pass wipe is simply WAY OVERKILL and COMPLETELY UNNECESSARY!!!

1. Create a bootable thumb drive. I have a written guide somewhere, however if i never end up getting to it googling for the stuff at cult of mac should help
2. . Boot in to it by choosing it in the start up pain under system prefs.
3. Turn on voice over.
4. Go to disk utility and reformat the whole entire drive. If ouhave boot camp it will hose it to.
5. reinstall osx by choosing this option after quitting the disk utility
6. Follow the prompts. and play the hury up and wait game.

good luck.

Usually the decks had a switch on them for chrome use ... there were usually two "depths" of chrome settings the second reducing even more hiss than the first, but if your source signal wasn't strong enough, you risk losing some of the audio. It is my opinion that the decks introduce a filter into the audio stream. The reason I think this, is because when listening to the headphone port while the deck is in record mode, the reduction of hissing happens in real time, and there is a noticeable difference between settings 1 and 2 on the chrome switch. There's no way that the you would be somehow listening to the tape playing back through the heads as it is simultaneously recording from the source, so the logical conclusion is that each of those switch settings introduces a filter of some kind ... I don't know if you'd call that a hi-pass filter or not ... I think that might be what it is since it takes out the high frequencies of hissing while attempting to maintain the desired audio in that frequency range as many instruments would produce sound in the hissing range.

However, I never did try those chrome settings on a non-chrome tape to see if there was any noticeable difference.

Concerning analog vs. digital ... I really never understood the apprehension to adopting digital since the number of samples in a second of music far exceeds what our ears are capable of discerning, and the frequencies that are sampled are also outside the range of normal human hearing. So in essence, the only real difference between analog and digital recordings, would be the lack of analog artifacts which are common in the media (tape hissing, vinyl pops through needle friction etc.) ... Digital would be able to represent the sound exactly as it would be expressed by whatever analog device received it whether that be a mic element, or a piezo pickup ... once the analog wave is converted into electrical energy, a digital sample will be indistinguishable from what you would hear if you were sitting at the mixing board during the recording process.

What absolutely amazes me, is that they actually had media capable of storing 600 megabytes back in 1986, when the best computer you could get could store at best 360k (.36 megabytes) on a 5.25" disk. And they only had to charge $15 for CDs ... that would have been 1,800 floppy disks on a single CD ... that is impressive! And people still use CDs today ... it's probably the only media type that has survived almost 30 years so far and is still used at a level where you can go to walmart and buy them without special ordering them. Find any media type that has survived as long.... well ... outside of vinyl I suppose ... ;-)

Michael

I hate to call attention to this, but I think the comment about tape decks and what not was a bit more than of topic. Could we please try to stick to the topic as stated by the title of the post? I know i'm not an admin, but wow. Not trying to be rude, but there you have it.

Thanks,

Joseph

Apologies...

No worries. Happens to us all. Just thought I'd kinda point it out since it didn't really fit with the topic of the thread. :)

In forum moderation, sometimes less is more. That is, there are situations where you decide the best approach is to leave things alone.

While the discussion of tape decks was indeed very off-topic, in this case the topic had been inactive for 3 days...and it was our hope that that would be the resolution of the issue.

For what it's worth, users wishing to discuss anything off-topic privately may certainly do so using the "Contact" link on the respective user's profile page.

Note: - Before you reinstall Mac Yosemite, you must be connected to the internet.
Now, to restore Yosemite from a Time Machine Backup, you should:-
1. Restart your Mac and immediately hold down the Command and R keys (once you hear the startup keys).
2. Now, a recovery windows open. Here, select the option to restore from time machine backup.
3. Select the backup disk of your time machine.
4. Select the time machine backup, which you want to restore.
5. Click continues and follows the screen instructions to process further.