Best way to wipe and upgrade Macbook Pro?

Drez

My Macbook Pro is woefully underutilized. I originally bought it for photo editing, but ever since I got my Surface Pro 4, I've been gravitating to that for my photo editing needs. I haven't touched it in awhile and even my version of OSX is outdated. This is running El Capitan which is

Originally, I had set up partitions and Bootcamp on my Macbook Pro but I want to wipe all remnants of that and use this purely as a Mac henceforth. I'm actually planning to use it primarily as a programming station.

Any advice? I think I've mostly found my personal files from both the Mac and the Windows 10 (Bootcamp) partitions. I finally figured out how to export photos from the Photos app, and that was basically the last wrinkle in my file backup plans. I worry I may be missing something though. Any way to use Finder, or is there another app, that I can use to scour my HDD for personal files?

And how do I trigger a wipe + upgrade to newest OSX? Do I upgrade first, then wipe? Or what? Will wiping allow me to fix my partitions?

Thanks.

Shadowfire

You can use Finder to just browse files on the drive. The majority of your files should be in the Users folders anyway, and you should see them in the All My Files section as is.

Should.

Drez

So according to System Information > Storage, my Mac partition capacity is 350 GB and my BOOTCAMP partition capacity is 150 GB.

I went through BOOTCAMP in the usual areas and it looks like I already backed all that stuff up. According to System Information > Storage, I only have 65 GB free. That means around 85 GB should be in use in the BOOTCAMP partition. If I add up the Windows, Program Files, and Program Files (x86) folders (and all the smaller ones), according to what Finder is telling me their sizes are, the used data only adds up to 52 GB. Where is that mysterious 33 GB? I'm looking at these folder sizes at the root of the BOOTCAMP partition.

In the MAC partition, according to System Information > Storage, I have 31.5 GB free out of 350 GB total capacity, suggesting almost 320 GB is in use. After consolidating all my user files...it looks like that eats p 68 GB, leaving 252 GB unaccounted for. 252 GB for, what, OS and apps? I highly doubt that.

Is there any way to view how much each installed application is taking up?

Drez

Nevermind, found that. I'll add this stuff up, but at quick glance there is a 0% chance it adds up to 252 GB.

Drez

OK figured that out too. But it doesn't add up. Literally. Maybe this will help:

Drez

This shows the top level/root of my Mac partition.

The oval is the total.

The rectangle is everything that should add up to that oval.

It's not even remotely fucking close.

What. The. Fuck.

Drez

Nevermind, I figured it all out. Jesus Christ, the Mac really goes out of its way to hide shit from you.

It was my Steam folder and my MobileSync (iPhone backups via iTunes) folder that was eating up the most space, hidden from me.

Oh and Mail but it's all gmail so I think that can just be deleted. I don't remove items from the server.

Echo

Drez wrote: »

And how do I trigger a wipe + upgrade to newest OSX? Do I upgrade first, then wipe? Or what? Will wiping allow me to fix my partitions?

First of all, make sure you've got shit backed up if you want to keep it, but I assume you got that covered.

You can make a bootable USB stick and boot from that - you'll use it to install the latest macOS, but you also have a menu that lets you access Disk Utility. There you can do a secure wipe of partitions.

edit: though usually a full wipe is overkill. The Bootcamp installer can also uninstall it, recovering that space, and then you can just upgrade macOS.

Drez

Echo wrote: »

Drez wrote: »

And how do I trigger a wipe + upgrade to newest OSX? Do I upgrade first, then wipe? Or what? Will wiping allow me to fix my partitions?

First of all, make sure you've got shit backed up if you want to keep it, but I assume you got that covered.

You can make a bootable USB stick and boot from that - you'll use it to install the latest macOS, but you also have a menu that lets you access Disk Utility. There you can do a secure wipe of partitions.

edit: though usually a full wipe is overkill. The Bootcamp installer can also uninstall it, and then you can just upgrade macOS.

Thanks! I ended up backing everything up, wiping, deleting the partition, installing El Capitan (which was what I had before), and now I just finished downloading Sierra through the App Store.

Is there any appreciable difference between this path, or doing a clean install of Sierra? Maybe I should do a new wipe after Sierra is done installing and do the direct Sierra install?

tynic

Sometimes a clean install can help clear up memory issues, but that's about the only time I'd do one - if you're not actually having problems I wouldn't bother. Apple generally recommend just doing the staged upgrades.