Screen shot courtesy of Coyote Moon, Inc.īefore proceeding, you should first verify that your Mac is capable of running OS X El Capitan you can do this by visiting: It’s the second option, a clean install of OS X El Capitan, which we’ll address in this guide. When the problems are severe enough you may be willing to trade keeping all of your apps and data for starting with a clean slate. The clean install method is a good choice for testing a new OS on a dedicated drive or partition, or when you have been experiencing software related issues with your Mac that you have not been able to fix. It replaces the contents of a selected volume with a new, pristine version of OS X El Capitan that does not include any previous versions of the operating system, applications, or data files that may have been present on the selected drive. The other installation process is known as the clean install. This is the most common means of upgrading the operating system and is recommended when your Mac is in good shape and having no problems.

The default method is an upgrade install, which will upgrade your Mac to El Capitan while preserving all of your user data and apps. OS X El Capitan supports two methods of installation.

How to clean install os x el capitan