After doing a routine check to see that my startup drive was in good shape I ran into a bunch of errors (described in greater detail here). Long story short, it looks like a nuke and pave is the only way out.
I have two local backups; Time Machine and SuperDuper. I am inclined to restore the Mac from the SuperDuper backup after nuking it and reinstalling High Sierra. It seems easier to do and I am hoping that I will get the system back exactly as I left it.
This is the first time that I am doing a nuke and pave and so was wondering if I need to do anything, such as signing out of iCloud, de-authorising the Mac for iTunes purchases etc beforehand. I will, of course, be making multiple backups in case anything goes wrong. Would love to get some tips from the folks here!
Check your authentications settings for your various accounts, specifically those requiring 2-factor authentication. Make sure that you have a way to get into them while your mac is out of commission.
Thanks for the tip. For software where licenses depend on the number of installations would it be best to de-activate and then re-activate the license so as to not exceed the number of total installations on a technicality?
If it’s possible to deactivate your software, I would do that. However these days when the amount of activations is tracked in some ways, most of the time there is an online portal where you can manage your activations. More important are older license keys that may not be easily retrievable.