Fresh Install Due to Unstable System- How to retain personal data

[Browny98]

Hello everyone,

I've had a look through the existing forums and struggled to find a similar problem/query. It may have already been answered and I haven't found it.

I've had some trouble with my existing mackintosh build with audio outputs becoming unrecognised following sleep and the system crashing when certain elements are present on websites.

I was recommended to do a fresh install of the MacOS and I'm happy to do so. I am mindful that I have a lot of personal data, family photos, that sort of thing on there and wouldn't want to lose them.

Currently my boot drive is an SSD with a separate HDD for storage.

I assume that if I disconnect the Storage drive during the fresh install, all that data effectively remains untouched? - Can I then also just drag and drop any files from my SSD onto the HDD that I also wish to keep?

My other thought was creating a true back-up disk or potentially using time-machine - I then thought that both of these options were at risk of bringing back the unstable system from before?

Is there any advice or suggestions on what I should do please? I suspect I'm just being overly-cautious

Many thanks,
Sam

 

[cmn699]

Hello everyone,

I've had a look through the existing forums and struggled to find a similar problem/query. It may have already been answered and I haven't found it.

I've had some trouble with my existing mackintosh build with audio outputs becoming unrecognised following sleep and the system crashing when certain elements are present on websites.

I was recommended to do a fresh install of the MacOS and I'm happy to do so. I am mindful that I have a lot of personal data, family photos, that sort of thing on there and wouldn't want to lose them.

Currently my boot drive is an SSD with a separate HDD for storage.

I assume that if I disconnect the Storage drive during the fresh install, all that data effectively remains untouched? - Can I then also just drag and drop any files from my SSD onto the HDD that I also wish to keep?

My other thought was creating a true back-up disk or potentially using time-machine - I then thought that both of these options were at risk of bringing back the unstable system from before?

Is there any advice or suggestions on what I should do please? I suspect I'm just being overly-cautious

Many thanks,
Sam

Any non -system data like Photos , messages in Text, Videos etc you have saved in different folders can be copied to that Storage drive if it has the same file system as the SSD or FAT32 or even ExFAT which your Mac can read. Best option is of course is having the same File System as the System Disk.
After new install on SSD you can drag and drop those files to Folders you had previously copied them from to the Storage disk.

 

[Browny98]

Thank you very much, that's brilliant.

My SSD runs as APFS and the storage as HFS+, i assume there'll be no issues there as that's a relatively standard apple set up?

 

[cmn699]

Thank you very much, that's brilliant.

My SSD runs as APFS and the storage as HFS+, i assume there'll be no issues there as that's a relatively standard apple set up?

yeah, it should work OK