You can make a difference in the Apple Support Community!
When you sign up with your Apple Account, you can provide valuable feedback to other community members by upvoting helpful replies and User Tips.
When you sign up with your Apple Account, you can provide valuable feedback to other community members by upvoting helpful replies and User Tips.
I have Yosemite, which works well with older data. The disc is nearly full, and storage is down to 12 GBs.
I want to keep Yosemite as the OS. I can reload items I want to use from flash drives.
Is this possible, or does erasing the disc remove the Yosemite OS as well? My iMac is year 2013.
Back up your disk, apps, settings, documents first for safekeeping. Erasing the boot disk would require starting up from a different disk. Erasing then would wipe the whole drive, including the OS. You can then re-install the OS, from an earlier downloaded installer, or else from the internet.
How to download and install macOS - Apple Support
Download OS X Yosemite 10.10.5 (.dmg) - Apple
Else delete your documents manually, but that is possibly less thorough.
iMacs from 2013 can run macOS up to 10.15 Catalina. That will likely use a bit more disk space, though. Depending on your needs with this machine, that may or may not be beneficial.
Bringing a bigger drive into this iMac, would require dismantling the screen. That may warrant professional assistance.
What drive (or drives) does it have currently? What storage total?
2/4/8/16 TB internal fast SSD drives are possible, but only you can decide if that is worth the investment.
You can also work with external drives, even for boot disk (OS), then you wouldn’t need to open it up.
What is the exact model iMac? Identify your iMac model - Apple Support
21.5-inch, 27-inch?
i3-3225, i5-4570x, i5-4670, i7-4770S, i7-4771?
2.7, 2.9, 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, 3.4, 3.5 GHz?
Back up your disk, apps, settings, documents first for safekeeping. Erasing the boot disk would require starting up from a different disk. Erasing then would wipe the whole drive, including the OS. You can then re-install the OS, from an earlier downloaded installer, or else from the internet.
How to download and install macOS - Apple Support
Download OS X Yosemite 10.10.5 (.dmg) - Apple
Else delete your documents manually, but that is possibly less thorough.
iMacs from 2013 can run macOS up to 10.15 Catalina. That will likely use a bit more disk space, though. Depending on your needs with this machine, that may or may not be beneficial.
Bringing a bigger drive into this iMac, would require dismantling the screen. That may warrant professional assistance.
What drive (or drives) does it have currently? What storage total?
2/4/8/16 TB internal fast SSD drives are possible, but only you can decide if that is worth the investment.
You can also work with external drives, even for boot disk (OS), then you wouldn’t need to open it up.
What is the exact model iMac? Identify your iMac model - Apple Support
21.5-inch, 27-inch?
i3-3225, i5-4570x, i5-4670, i7-4770S, i7-4771?
2.7, 2.9, 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, 3.4, 3.5 GHz?
I would recommend creating a bootable macOS USB installer so that you have more options in case you have issues with Internet Recovery Mode.
Create a bootable installer for macOS - Apple Support
If you want macOS 10.10 Yosemite specifically, then you will need to use the instructions for El Capitan as a guide for making a bootable USB installer changing the name from "El\ Capitan" to "Yosemite" in two places for the Terminal command.
FYI, I would never trust a USB stick with any important data since the quality of USB sticks is extremely poor. USB sticks are good for bootable installers and for transferring items between systems, but I would never use them as a backup device.
Thanks for the description of your computer.
It may seem obvious, but verify that you emptied the Trash, as a separate action.
Or it may need a restart before the Finder etc. realize that purged space is free to use again.
The Time Machine local snapshots also take up space on your boot disk.
Here are two Apple’s guides for erasing and reinstalling macOS (or OS X).
If you are still able to read this - I know there are no stupid questions, except maybe this one!
That is a very good question, and Apple has a strategy for this situation. I think it is only obvious if you have done it before.
Once I erase Yosemite, what can I do? I have the belief that the OS is everything. I imagine a blank screen with nothing on it. How could I then download Yosemite after erasing everything? Can you suggest what I need to read? Thank you.
The new (or same) macOS version will be downloadable (when internet-connected), through ‘Recovery Mode’. Recovery is a minimal system on a hidden partition, with just a few functions to help you “recover”.
There are also offline options, if you want to build an external startup disk and have the installer ready on that disk as well. That external disk can be a thumb drive. It is more preparation work though. The above is easier.
Sorry if I am late on the scene but I have another way which I have done so many times, though not with Yosemite.
On your existing Mac create a new admin account – let’s call it “keep”.
You will need to have Carbon Copy Cloner software but Super Duper might also work. If you haven’t a copy of CCC you can get a trial copy.
Connect an USB external hard drive that is either empty or make a partition bigger than your Mac used space.
Use CCC to clone your Mac Yosemite OS and user accounts onto this hard drive (partition?).
This should be a bootable version.
Once complete, reboot your Mac holding the Option key and select the USB hard drive with Yosemite, to boot from.
If successful then you are on the right path.
Open Disk Utilities and erase the Mac hard drive and format it.
When complete start up CCC and clone the system on the USB hard drive back to your mac.
This is where your account ‘keep’ comes from for if you didn’t want to retain your other user accounts you only copy ‘keep’ account.
Once complete boot the Mac normally and you’ll will have erased the disk and kept the OS. Of course you still have a complete bootable clone of your old Mac too.
Usually "Macintosh HD", but it really depends on how the system is configured and which OS you will be installing.
Personally I like erasing the whole physical drive (Intel Macs only...macOS 10.11+ usually, not sure about Yosemite) or partition & create a file system (macOS 10.10 and earlier) in order to create a fresh partition table as well. However, if you have not created a bootable macOS USB installer, then doing that is risky if you end up trying to reboot back into local recovery mode.
You are welcome. We are glad to hear you have been successful. It is gratifying to know that another older device is still able to be useful instead of going to a landfill. Thanks for following up with the results, it is always nice to know that our assistance produced a positive result & outcome.
Erasing the Disc eill zero every thing out.what I'd suggest is getting an external Hard Drive or SSD to move your big files to.
Which exact Mac do you have?
To Urquhart1244 and also HWTech,
Success! My old iMac now does exactly what I wanted.
With Gratitude,
Tomcray
Thank you. The Yosemite data is already backed up to an external drive, and several thumb drives. What I want is enough space to use my thumb drives and maybe run You Tube. It is 'late' 2013, OS X, 21.5 inch, 2.7 Ghz Intel Core i5, 8 GB memory, 1600 MHz DDR3, Yosemite version 10.10.5 Current storage is 13.34 GB free of 999.03 GB. Breakdown is 484 GB "movies". (which is not actual movies. It may be program videos). 302 GB audio.
180 other. 14 GB Apps. 4.7 GB photos.
I have deleted all of the data that was used (what it says above). I was expecting to retrieve data space, yet "Get Info" shows that the disk is nearly full, as does ''about this Mac" (above breakdown). So deleting did nothing. That is why I thought maybe I could wipe the disk. I have never done that so this is new for me.
This is just my old iMac and I hope to view some old data on it. I currently also have a 2019 iMac running Sonoma.
Thank you. I have a lot of info here to learn. Nothing is obvious for me. Once I study all this, I will probably have new questions. I think this is going to work, and that is great news!
Thanks again,
Tom
If you are still able to read this - I know there are no stupid questions, except maybe this one!
Once I erase Yosemite, what can I do? I have the belief that the OS is everything. I imagine a blank screen with nothing on it. How could I then download Yosemite after erasing everything? Can you suggest what I need to read? Thankyou.
I started the process today. New Q: On the erase page, I have choices. Do I select: 1) Macintosh HD, 2) disk 1, or 3) below disk 1, in a sub heading, "OS X Base System".
What happens if I had selected the wrong choice? Which choice is the one I want, to erase GBs that have overloaded my iMac, which as far as I have learned, will have to be all. Simply deleting most of the GBs did nothing. When I pressed the selection 'erase' I got these choices. ( I now have 14 GBs of storage left.)
Thanks
"OS X Base System" is in Firmware & allows you to run a few things inRestore Mode, that is not what you choose.
Can I erase a disc and keep the OS?
