Does Lion Recovery tool to reinstall OS X delete all your files?

I don't know why Apple can't make this clear: Does the reinstalling option in Recovery simply reinstall OS X over the old OS, or does it wipe the hard drive clean, including your media, documents iLife updates, etc?
Because my login freezes with the beach ball of death nearly every time I boot up, I've been hoping a reinstall would fix it, but I saw no option or information at all for what exactly happens when you do a reinstall, and didn't want to chance losing my files and settings.

I think that the installation via the Lion Recovery HD will work like a repair install--which, in the case of Lion, requires only running the Lion installer from within Lion, itself. I have done a repair install as an experiment, and, yes, there were no noticaeable changes in the original installation. Of course, if there had been an installation-related problem to fix, then the problem likely would have been fixed via the repair install.
I mentioned above that I am going to do an experimental Lion re-install. I will be using the Lion Recovery Disc Assistant. I started the process, at my first opportunity a short while ago, but canceled the installation because the predicted installation time was over 5 hours--using gigabit ethernet. I plan to start again at bedtime tonight.
FYI, the system I will be installing from is as follows. I created an ultra clean install of Lion on my internal drive using the Lion installer from an external drive. Thereafter, I installed all else "by hand." This process created a Lion Recovery HD on my internal. Then, I created a Lion Recovery Disk Assistant.
I will never use Time Machine. I think tha app can be too big a PIA especially with a laptop. In general, I don't like to lose as much control as Time Machine requires IMO. My general back up/recovery process/medium is cloning to and from a bootable external created with SuperDuper--which I update pretty frequently, in general, and backup with respect to data very frequently.
So, after creating the ultra clean install noted above and creating the Lion Recovery Disk Assistant, I cloned to my external to make make sure everything would likely reamain AOK with the Lion Recovery HD/Lion Recovery Disc Assistant over time, Then, I made sure that the Recovery Disk Assistant still apparently functioned properly after a cloning to my internal by starting up to it, etc.
And, that is the point from which I began the aborted reinstall of Lion using the Lion Recovery Disk Assistant mentioned above. And, of course, this is the system I intend to reinstall Lion on at bedtime.
Time will tell. If anyone wants to beat me to the punch, please feel free to jump right in. Hopefully, if you do so, then you will let me know what happens so I can cancel my experiment.

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My iTunes is creating duplicates of playlists and hanging up. running latest version of lion, and iTunes using match and iCloud. please help. I have uninstalled and reinstalled iTunes. deleted all library files and is doing same thing.

I am runing lion and latest version of itunes. I have match on, home sharing on and using icloud. my itunes started hanging up and required me to force quit. then upon restart of itunes and restart of computer itunes would take upwards of 15 minutes to open and was using >90% of CPU and would be lagging in response if responding at all one of the playlists I had created on my ipad had over a hundred copies of the same playlist. after repeated restarts I uninstaled itunes and reinstalled. this didnt rectify the problem. I assumed library file had somehow become corrupt so I deleted library files, reimported all my music and synced with genius and match. and let the computer go over night. when I woke in morning all my music was back but I had all the extra playlists again and itunes is hogging all the cpu and was minimally responsive and hanging up after each click.
I thought this might be a virus or something but installed ESET cypersecurity did a complet scan with no threats found. I am at a total loss and do not know where to go from here. I hope one of you can assist. Thanks!

I had this exact issue. Spent over an hour on the phone with apple support, they couldn't resolve. Here is what I ended up doing, that worked.
1. Turned iTunes match off on all my iOS devices
2. Deleted the offending playlists from the iOS device they originated on
3. Started iTunes, let it run (literally) for an hour before it became responsive. First thing I did, before clicking anywere else was disable iTunes match. If I clicked anywhere, it would clock for another hour.
4. Let iTunes run overnight, by morning it had cleaned out the repeating play lists. This got my Mac/iTunes back to an operable state.
5. Restore iPhones from backup in iTunes.
What was causing my issue was a single playlist that was created on an iPhone, then suddenly showed up with several thousand duplicates on my other iPhone. The culprit playlist did not, for some reason, duplicate itself on my two iPads. Apple support seemed to think it was because the problem iPhone tried to sync the playlist to iCloud over and over again unsuccessfully, then it finally went through and populated the thousands of blank/failed playlists which then tried to propigate to iTunes and my other iOS devices. Seems like a reasonable theory.
I have not yet re-enabled iTunes match. So, no idea what will happen if I decide to go back down that rabbit hole.

Recently my MacBookPro locked up on startup. Could not get past a certain point of progress bar. I had upgraded to Yosemite few weeks back, with no issues. I ended up doing a Recovery with Time Machine and I got all my apps, photos, documents, etc. back o

Recently my MacBookPro locked up on startup. Could not get past a certain point of progress bar. I had upgraded to Yosemite few weeks back, with no issues. I ended up doing a Recovery with Time Machine and I got all my apps, photos, documents, etc. back okay --- except I got error messages that my "registration for Photoshop (I use CS4 Extended) and Photo Mechanic are no longer working". I worked on Photoshop first, and tried (several times) to fix it with their online help suggestions. Nothing worked.
Is there a simpler way to "get my licenses/registrations back"??? I am also going to contact Camera Bits about the Photo Mechanic issues. Thanks

Same problem and for months now. I haven't been able to find a solution, but I suspect that's because I don't know exactly what's wrong.

If you reinstall Mac OSX 10.5, does it erase all your files and settings??

If you reinstall Mac OSX 10.5, does it erase all your files and settings, if it does, how would you install iMovie by itself, because I accidenatlly deleted imovie

jd087 wrote:
If you reinstall Mac OSX 10.5, does it erase all your files and settings,
that depends what reinstall option you choose. an erase and install will erase everything. an archive and install will preserve user data and applications.
However neither one will reinstall imovie which is part of ilife which is separate from the OS itself. you can reinstall ilife only. there is no need to reinstall the whole OS. if you bought ilife separately then use the ilife DVD. if ilife came with your mac then insewrt install disk 1 that came with your computer, open it in finder and double-click on "install bundled software only".

When upgrading to mountain lion will it delete all my files?

Will an upgrade to mountain lion delete all my files so as to lose data or will my existing files be saved?

That's the difference between doing an upgrade or a fresh install. Mac OS 10.6 or .7 can be upgraded or even reinstalled over the top of the existing OS without affecting the user folder which contains all your documents, pictures, music, etc.
In order to do a fresh install you would have to used Disk Utility to wipe the drive before you do the installation.

How long does it take to delete all the files in a lost MacBook Pro?

How long does it take to delete all the files in a lost MacBook Pro?

Quite a while since there may be 1/2 million files or more to delete. There is only one quick way, and that is to reformat the drive.

Does Adobe Send allow you to select how many days your files can be downloaded - as with Adobe Send Now? Also, why don't I see the virus scanning message any longer with "Send" versus "Send Now"?

Does Adobe Send allow you to select how many days your files can be downloaded - as with Adobe Send Now? Also, why don't I see the virus scanning message any longer with "Send" versus "Send Now"?

We relied upon the "days available for download" to get people to take
action more quickly. The "virus scanning" progress bar was simply another
way of knowing this activity was actually taking place - unless this is
written somewhere in the Adobe Send User Guide.....wherever that is.
On Tue, Dec 2, 2014 at 12:09 PM, bob.treitman <[email protected]>

Mac os Lion installed not deleting all my files

Good morning, I'm sorry but I didn't know where I could Write this question. However, buying lion osx, and installing it, will I lose all my files or can be do a normal update not losing my files? Must i do a new installation or I can have all my files without backups? Thanks

It hasn't been released yet so no one knows yet for sure.
If past experience is worth anything, it should not.
Having said that I always strongly recommend that you backup just in case anything goes wrong during the upgrade. It is always best to have a backup and not need it then to need a backup and not have it!!!
Is your profile correct when it states that you are running 10.6.5?
If you are, you will need to upgrade Snow Leopard to get the App Store in order to download Lion.
Allan

Does upgrading to ios 5 log you out of all your applications?

I haven't upgraded because I don't remember several of my passwords and don't want to go through the hassle of resetting them. Does upgrading to ios 5 log you out of all your applications?

Thanks. Does anyone know for sure about Facebook, Hootsuite, Twitter, etc?

Will installing lion delete all my files and apps?

will installing lion delete all my files and apps? if yes, is there a way ti make sure i can get it all again? i'm new to mac and upgrading OS's

just wanted to make sure. I'm gonna back up my things in time machine first but im new to that too (figures). can i partition my hard drive and back up my data there? and if so how would i do so?

Lion Recovery (Command R- reinstall Lion) Says 148 hours after being on for one day and over night

I accidently deleted some file on my computer that wouldn't let me start up my MacBook pro, 13 Inch, so I had to press Command- R at start up (brought me to Lion Recovery) and I choose reinstall lion and I started it yesterday morning and all day and over night. It's barely half way through and it says "148 Hours Left" which is crazy.. Should I just wait? is this normal? what do I do? Pleasee help someone!

It seems Apple is having problems with there servers or you have a Very Slow Internet connection. Best is to let it run as you can't use the computer anyway without the files you deleted.
There are reports of other that can not even get to the Lion download or any downloads for updates and such.

My computer currently does not have Lion, if I want to install it will it delete all my files?

I have a MacBook Pro that I got a few years ago. I have a ton of files and documents saved on here. Will upgrading to OS X Lion delete them? Thank you.

Upgrading from Snow Leopard will keep everything untouched, just the system will be upgraded. Nevertheless, you MUST bbackup your files, especially when doing an upgrade, even if it theoretically does not destroy anything. You write: ‘I have a ton of files and documents saved on here.’ Eactly from this reason, you MUST backup these files somewhere else than the disk inside your mac. What will you do if this disk dies one good day?

Installing recovery HD accidentally deleted all my files on External Hard Drive - How do I get back??

I am preparing my mac for selling, and I wanted to keep mountain lion on it, so I tried to install Recovery HD. however I accidentally clicked yes when it said it will delete from the external hard drive. So now all the files I had saved on there, including all my songs, are gone. I can't use time Machine because my time machine backups were on that hard drive. Someone please help me!!

If you erased that hard drive accidentally, there's not much you can do to easily recover. You can try some recovery utilities, like Data Rescue or File Salvage. The results are not likely to be pretty, as you will have lost the entire directory structure.
For the future, one set of backups is not enough, for precisely this kind of reason. Also, storing other data on the same drive as your backups is a similarly bad idea. Maintain a minimum of two separate backups, on two completely separate physical devices, and do not put any other data on any of those backup drives.

HT202412 I want to delete all my files in Final Cut and start fresh. Will that be accomplished by deleting application and reinstalling? I am worried all the media will be there again.

If I reinstall the Final Cut X app, will all my media be there? I want to get rid of it all. Files are missing, etc. A hot mess. Seems easier to just start over but I don't want that media to show up again. Thanks. Must have had a bad day when I made my username here. Sorry.

The operation can’t be completed because the item “com.apple.FinalCut.LSSharedFileList.plist” is in use.
I got this message as I tried to empty trash. Final Cut X is not open. How do I get rid of this puppy? Thank you.

Uninstall the application does not delete all new files and folders.

If the user decides to uninstall my Air app, it does not delete the created folders with files in AppData. Another problem is that if the application creates new files in the folder Program Files/AirAppFolder, then uninstall of the app are not deleted these files.
How to solve these problems, help please?

Hi,
AIR shouldn't be creating additional files in your program files folder, is this something you're doing programmatically? If so, you might want to consider using File.applicationStorageDirectory instead given permission problems you'll have on newer operating systems.
As to uninstalling all files (even the data created in the user's storage folder) this is something you might consider using a native installer to take care of. Since the AIR installer is unaware of this data, it won't know to delete it on uninstall. Instead, you'll want to create a custom function in a native installer that deletes these folders/files and then sub launches the AIR install/uninstall.
Thanks,
Chris

Does Lion Recovery tool to reinstall OS X delete all your files?

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