Ever wondered how to reinstall your OS without a restore disc? Every new Mac OS update is available in the App Store, so new Macs haven’t shipped with a restore disc in a few years. In fact, many new Macs have no optical drive whatsoever. I know we’ve been saying this for a while, but the time is rapidly approaching where discs will be completely obsolete.
I recently had a conversation with Chris B., our handy Waitsfield tech and phone support guru, where I told him that I thought I might need to reinstall Mavericks on my home iMac. To troubleshoot some of the issues I was having, he recommended some other things first — which I plan to try — but he reminded me that although restoring/reinstalling is a different process than I was used to, it is still easy and straightforward.
So — for those of you who have gotten used to using Command-C to boot from your OS disc, listen up: ‘R’ is the new ‘C’.
Here’s the drill:
Hold down Command-R during startup and OS X Recovery will launch. It lets you choose from common utilities, including Disk Utility to check or repair your hard drive, erase your hard drive and reinstall a fresh copy of OS X, or restore your Mac from a Time Machine backup. Additionally, you can use Safari to get help from Apple Support online, but I imagine most users care more about the Disk Utility options that have been familiar since the dawn of the Mac OS.
Note: As always, before reinstalling your OS, make sure you have a viable backup if possible.