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Wipe Late 2012 iMac/Reinstall Catalina

without having an installation cd/dvd how can I wipe and reinstall Catalina onto this iMac and although I have had this iMac since early 2013 will all the necessary drivers be loaded as well? Sorry old PC questions, I know... Thanks!

iMac 21.5", 10.15

Posted on Oct 24, 2019 9:31 AM

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Question marked as Apple recommended

From the Recovery Partition. However before going down that road it would be useful if we knew why you feel this is necessary.

Posted on Oct 24, 2019 10:42 AM

8 replies

Oct 25, 2019 6:58 AM in response to drmglfr

Please download and run Etrecheck  It is a diagnostic tool that's very useful to us in finding problems. Also it will give us further specs on your Mac. After it runs post the log file here. It will contain no personal information. Allowing full drive access will improve the quality of the report.


To post the log file click on share report and use the Page icon in your reply window.

Oct 26, 2019 9:44 AM in response to drmglfr

Your computer is slow because you bought a base model iMac with 8GB of un-upgradeable RAM and a glacially slow 5400 RPM HD. This computer would be fine for doing basic tasks such as surfing the web and reading e-mail however you have installed professional grade applications that demand a more powerful computer to run them.


About the ONLY thing you can do with your current machine if you want to continue using it the way you want to is to buy an external SSD (visit www.macsales.com) and then migrate everything on your internal HD to the SSD and use that as your primary drive and then use the HD for just additional storage. You cannot upgrade the RAM though as mentioned.


What I'd recommend is an OWC SSD in a Mercury Elite Pro enclosure, both are available from www.macsales.com or if you don't like the solution ask them for their recommendations. You would need to call them, explain your dilemma and what you want to do and then they can help you select a solution that suits your needs.

Oct 26, 2019 10:26 AM in response to drmglfr

I agree with rkaufmann87 100%


Plus your drive is slower than normal

Performance:
System Load: 1.68 (1 min ago) 1.55 (5 min ago) 1.04 (15 min ago)
Nominal I/O speed: 4.75 MB/s
File system: 40.88 seconds
Write speed: 44 MB/s
Read speed: 36 MB/s


and your using up all 8GB RAM to startup macOS and launch tons of third party apps.

Free RAM: 15 MB
Used RAM: 4.18 GB
Cached files: 3.81 GB

Wipe Late 2012 iMac/Reinstall Catalina

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