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thesameguy
December 8th, 2016, 02:00 PM
I feel like this is a dumb question, but hopefully someone knows: if you use disk utilities to erase the HDD and reinstall osx, what OS do you get back? The one that shipped with the computer, or the one the computer was just running?

Jason
December 8th, 2016, 03:46 PM
Theoretically your recovery drive should be the OS you had before erasing your HDD.

Unless you erase your recovery drive in the process of reformatting, that is.

thesameguy
December 8th, 2016, 09:18 PM
When you say recovery drive, are you talking about an external device, or a spot on the internal drive? I am embarrassingly ignorant of OSX.

I have a c2008 MacBook that was upgraded to Yosemite through the app store. I don't actually remember what OS it came with - it was a long time ago! I need to sanitize the drive, but I don't know the best way to do it. A support article on Apple says to boot into recovery mode and erase the drive, then boot into recovery mode and reinstall the OS. I know what happens to c2008 Windows devices when you do this (you get the original OS back) and I know what happens to c2016 Windows devices (you get the most recent OS back). I am not confident I can reinstall Yosemite, so I don't want to nuke the thing from orbit and hose myself.

This MacBook is in superb shape, but it's old and busted... it's only worth a limited amount of my time before I'm better off just throwing it away.

Jason
December 9th, 2016, 04:34 AM
Recovery drive as in a partition on the system disk dedicated to system tools and OS recovery.

I just reinstalled a system, myself, and I got my most recent OS... I have no guarantee that's how it'll work for you :P

Yw-slayer
December 9th, 2016, 04:52 AM
Buy a PC.

thesameguy
December 9th, 2016, 08:53 AM
I have a PC. This is an old MacBook we kept at the office for doing Mac stuff. It's too old now to reliably do what we need it to, but someone else could certainly use it for web surfing or email or whatever. I can't give it to someone without sanitizing it first, but if it's possible to do that and help someone out with a computer I'll put in some time.

thesameguy
December 9th, 2016, 08:54 AM
Recovery drive as in a partition on the system disk dedicated to system tools and OS recovery.

I just reinstalled a system, myself, and I got my most recent OS... I have no guarantee that's how it'll work for you :P

Sounds fair enough - I will push the buttons tonight while waiting for FFXV to download a 10gb patch. :lol:

Jason
December 9th, 2016, 10:10 AM
"Minor text fixes" - 10gb

Yw-slayer
December 9th, 2016, 06:42 PM
Ah. Furry muff.

thesameguy
December 9th, 2016, 08:15 PM
Worked as advertised - fresh install of OSX, no pain. :up:

Jason
December 10th, 2016, 03:45 AM
:up: