Gabyyyyy
Level 1 (0 points)

Q: What will happen to my iPhotos when I wipe my Macbook Air?

I've got a lot of 'Other' taking up storage on my macbook and I'm probably going to wipe it and see if that'll free up some space. However I'm concerned about my iPhotos - say I didn't transfer them to another hard drive, would they be on my iPhoto again when I logged back onto my apple account on the freshly-wiped macbook? Or am I going to need to transfer them all to a hard drive? I can't seem to find a clear answer to this anywhere, but maybe I just don't understand how iPhoto works.

p.s. are there any other back-up systems I should check before wiping my macbook? I've got all my documents off iCloud and my initial files but I feel like it's all been a bit too easy (especially where apple is concerned, ha ha).

MacBook Air, OS X Yosemite (10.10.1)

Posted on Dec 22, 2014 3:44 PM

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Gabyyyyy

Q: What will happen to my iPhotos when I wipe my Macbook Air?

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  • by lizdance40,

    lizdance40 lizdance40 Dec 22, 2014 3:45 PM in response to Gabyyyyy
    Level 4 (2,382 points)
    Dec 22, 2014 3:45 PM in response to Gabyyyyy

    They would be erased.

    backup any data you may not be able to replace.

  • by OGELTHORPE,Helpful

    OGELTHORPE OGELTHORPE Dec 22, 2014 3:54 PM in response to Gabyyyyy
    Level 9 (52,812 points)
    Mac OS X
    Dec 22, 2014 3:54 PM in response to Gabyyyyy

    You are going about this in the wrong way.  First you must understand what OTHER is:

     

    http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202867

     

    There are many important files in that category that must not be deleted.

     

    Download from the Internet OmniDiskSweeper and Gran Perspective (both free) and open them.  They will show all of your files and the respective sizes.  Transfer to an external HDD the file you do not want on the MBA or delete them.  Do not forget to empty Trash.

     

    Time machine is an excellent backup system.  The best strategy is for two backups and I can recommend using Carbon Copy Cloner as a supplement system.  It can create a boot drive as well as perform incremental backups.  I use both.

     

    Ciao.

  • by Gabyyyyy,

    Gabyyyyy Gabyyyyy Dec 22, 2014 4:13 PM in response to OGELTHORPE
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Dec 22, 2014 4:13 PM in response to OGELTHORPE

    Thanks, but I've tried a lot of methods similar to the ones you have recommend and I still have over 30gb of 'Other', which is a pretty significant chunk of my 120gb memory. I'm not going to delete the files, I'm just going to restore the laptop to factory settings. I installed a few games that I didn't delete properly and I suspect those might be the cause of the other memory, so I'm hoping that by restoring it that'll free up that space.

    And thanks for the back-up tips, but I'm only seventeen. The most important thing I have on my laptop is a few photos and videos that haven't made it to Facebook yet and a couple of coursework documents. I've got two hard drives I've backed my files up onto; I hope that should be enough, haha. It's just a pain to have to move everything!