Restore Mac OS

[MatthewL]

I have a Mac Book that I bought second hand for a project that I am now wanting to sell on just struggling to restore it to defaults.

 

It's running MacOS Sierra, its a late 2009 13" model and other than a bulge on the battery is ok but I'm not a fan of them. I have no discs or anything and it keeps talking about pressing the command and R going into disc utility and formatting downloading from the net. Does this sound right? I have been looking to find an ISO to create a disk from but not having much joy.

 

Sorry not a big Mac user, know enough for day to day stuff but only use them from time to time so any help would be appreciated.

[tg12]

That’s correct. Command - R will get you into recovery. Wipe the disk in Disk Utility and then select Reinstall macOS from the first menu and it’ll download a new copy straight from the internet and install it.

[MatthewL]

Thanks for that, didn't want to do it and it be wrong and loose the lot.

[tg12]

That is the lovely thing with Macs, the recovery options are so simple, no trying to download the right thing or find a suitable disk. Even if you change the hard drive (and so lose the recovery partition), it’ll download a copy from Apple’s servers to allow it to boot.

[MatthewL]

Am I right in thinking if you put a SSD in you can still access this menu and redownload?

[FN-GM]

Am I right in thinking if you put a SSD in you can still access this menu and redownload?

 

Yep done it myself.

[MatthewL]

Handy to know thanks for that.

[Priscilla110]

In the menu bar, choose Apple menu > Restart. As your Mac restarts, hold down the Command and R keys until the macOS Utilities window appears and follow the instructions.