And so here we are again. With a new MacOS version imminent I contemplate erasing the hard drive and starting afresh – again. Alas I have not been brave enough to do it for many years and so a new version just updates the old version amidst all the accumulated crud. And when I occasionally buy a new computer the hard drive size will be enormous compared to the old one so everything gets copied over, because there is so much space in there, and we carry on. The oldest file on here dates back to 2007.

How many versions of GHC does a chap need?

But this is a whole new era and we are moving from iterations of macOS 10 to the all new and shiny macOS 11 and so I will definitely be doing it this time. Deep down I know that something is going to get screwed up – like that account for something or other that I use daily and set up 10 years ago which will now require a password which I will not have saved anywhere – or more frustratingly I will have saved it but cannot now find it anywhere.

I did a full back up yesterday and a mere 13 hours later it had copied all of the 4.5 million files.. did I mention the crud?

So I am planning on using a blank partition on an external drive and booting from that with a fresh install to see what happens and if I can produce a functioning system. If that works then the big red ERASE-AT-YOUR-PERIL button will be clicked and we will be crud free – for at least a week.