How do I reformat my Mac's internal hard drive and then recover all of my data?
How do I reformat my Mac's internal hard drive and then recover all of my data? Will my Mac start up OK once I have reformatted my hard drive?
I have Time Machine working and it is up to date.
12 Answers
- Andy TLv 72 months ago
You probably misunderstood what a reformat is. This blanks the drive without blanking it in a technical sense and effectively no longer starts up without reinstallation and data is scrambled without recognition to those that do do the retrieval business.
Effectively blank to ordinary users, Time Machine is backups tool, I assume you are sure the backs imagery is proper, that's at most what you going to "recover" though I'm a bit confused what is it.
- 2 months ago
backup everything using time machine or by copying all the files on an external hard drive or flash drive
- Richard JLv 72 months ago
You need to copy all your personal data to a hard drive before formatting your computer
Whenever you format the computer it is returned to it's original factory settings. Before you do the procedure, contact a friend for some help. Even the personnel at Staples or Office depot etc will always help you ..
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- keerokLv 72 months ago
Formatting the hard drive will delete all data making recovery useless. The proper procedure is to recover the data first then reformat. If the hard drive does not work properly anymore and data can no longer be recovered, there is no point formatting it anymore.
Lesson learned? Do backups. USB flash drives are cheap.
- HernandoLv 52 months ago
Friend, you haven't got a prayer of doing that successfully. You should have been doing backups all along like the grownups do.
- JeffLv 42 months ago
I have a better Idea.
Instead of asking a Computer-related question in this forum,
you should go to the Knitting forum and ask questions about NFL Football.
- 2 months ago
Save first your important data to external disk before to reformat the HDD.
Like life, to be happy.
- five toed slothLv 72 months ago
1. repost this in the Computers and Internet section.
2. Ignore anything you read on Yahoo Answers and go to a reputable Mac help site or forum.
- A Yahoo UserLv 72 months ago
Since you've made this a religious question
the answer is
Pray very, very hard.