Non-destructive reinstall of OS X?

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Level 1

1 points

Non-destructive reinstall of OS X?

Is it possible to do a non-destructive reinstallation of OS X using the "Install Mac OS X" function on my recovery partition?

If not, how can I do a non-destructive reinstallation to repair a corrupted OS X installation? Somehow my installation got screwed up, and as (bad) luck would have it, my trusty, automated Time Machine backup chose to go haywire around the same time. Thus, I'm left with a non-booting OS X installation that I strongly suspect is just a couple of fried system files away from perfect health, and no way to resore from my backups. By the way, my OS X 10.8, MacBook Pro 13" 2009's boot drive is under FileVault 2 encryption.

Any ideas?

MacBook Pro, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.2)

Posted on Sep 24, 2012 4:36 AM

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Answer 1

Barney-15E

Level 10

122,072 points

Sep 24, 2012 4:47 AM in response to UltraBird

Installing OS X is always non-destructive, to your data anyway. It is fairly destructive to the OS itself.

I haven't been playing with FileVault in a while, so I don't know what implications that has on recovering your system.

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Answer 2

softwater

Level 5

5,556 points

Sep 24, 2012 5:22 AM in response to UltraBird

If you do a reinstall via the Recovery partition it will not (read: should not) touch any user accounts or the data therein. It only replaces the system files.

That said, if you do a reinstall without having a backup, you're taking a risk. Use Carbon Copy Cloner to clone your current system (never rely solely on Time Machine!) before attempting the reinstall.

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