See also: For most users, this is the best way to upgrade because it means your existing programs and data remain where they are. Sometimes, however, you don't want to do a regular OS upgrade. Maybe you want to start fresh or maybe you need to install El Capitan on a machine that doesn't already have OS X installed.
Previously, Microsoft forced users to upgrade to Windows 10 before they could start fresh and do a clean install–which was annoyingly complicated and time-consuming. Now, things are much easier, since you can activate Windows 10 with a Windows 7, 8, or 8.1 key.
For those users, the best bet is to do a clean installation, erasing the hard disk and installing from scratch. If you want to do a clean install of OS X El Capitan on your Mac — or on a new hard drive — you can do it, it just takes a bit of work. If you've gone through the clean install processes in the last few years, these instructions will look familiar. (That's because they are almost the same as past years, albeit with changes made for the proper OS name). With a little time, it's relatively easy to create a bootable copy of OS X El Capitan that you can run from a USB stick or other drive.
Note: A clean install will erase all of the contents on your disk drive. Make sure to back up your important files, settings and apps before proceeding. El Capitan Clean Install. First, I'd like to thank forum member for his instructions on creating a manual bootable USB copy of OS X Mavericks back in 2013.
His work made it easy to update the instructions to work in El Capitan. This method requires using the Terminal app. If you're not comfortable typing commands into Terminal, just use the DiskMaker X app (above).
To continue with using Terminal, follow the steps below. After downloading OS X El Capitan to your Applications folder and formatting your USB drive (make sure it's called 'Untitled'), open up the Terminal app.
Paste the following command into the Terminal window and hit enter:. You will be prompted to enter in your user password. Then, you'll see a list of processes on the terminal screen that read: Erasing Disk: Copying Installer files to disk.
This process runs a special mode built into the OS X El Capitan installer that can create installable media. The disk you're copying the media onto becomes bootable, too.
The process takes less time than DiskMaker X, but you'll need to follow the instructions exactly. Don't move the installer to another folder, and make sure you don't have more than one disk drive titled 'Untitled' connected to your machine.
The idea behind a macOS Clean Install When you install a new major version of OS X, or after some time has passed, it is a good idea to do a clean install (that is, to erase the disk you are installing OS X onto as part of the installation process). That will make your Mac run blazingly fast for a few months or more, and many people report that it fixes longstanding problems they’ve had too. It used to be common practice to occasionally run a clean install, and then manually migrate all the files and settings over in order to get a completely fresh start. However, it has been shown in recent times that in the vast majority of cases if you simply run a clean install, then duplicate your old home folder to your new disk, you will get all of the same advantages as a clean install followed by manual migration, with a small fraction of the effort.
Mac Clean Install Procedure Here is the clean install procedure which can be performed at least every time a new version of macOS is released:. Download the macOS installer from the App Store. You can download macOS High Sierra by clicking. Backup all the data to an external disk with a clone. Two options are to use (a free utility which can copy and paste an entire bootable volume), or (a paid, fully featured backup utility with unique incremental backups capability) for that. Create a bootable USB Installer with and boot from it. Erase the startup disk and install macOS onto it. Boot up from this newly created startup disk.
Note: The Finder’s built-in “Copy” and “Paste” will not work for the following. Go to the backup disk and use (free) or to right-click and select Copy on the home folder (eg: External Backup/Users/Bob) and then Paste on the Macintosh HD/Users folder on the startup disk. This migrates all of your personal data and settings to your new home folder. Then migrate the applications by selecting Copy on the External Backup/Applications folder on the backup disk then Paste on the startup disk (eg: Macintosh HD). This will copy all of the applications which are present on the backup disk but not present on the startup disk to your new Applications folder, and automatically skip any applications which are already on the startup disk. At this point, after a reboot and some minor adjustments (the Dock may not have your previous configuration for example, if you did this while logged into the same user account as you just updated), your new OS should be indistinguishable from your previous one, while being faster and smaller due to reduced clutter.