I need to reinstall my OS, and will upgrade to Catalina. How do I do this?

[oxband]

I am on my 2nd MBP. For this computer, I just copied the old hard drive and by now, over the accumulation of time and apps, I have a MBP whose kernel task is sometimes running hundreds of threads, and I got the advice to just do a clear reinstall and bring back apps one by one.

I'm going to do that and want to know the safest way to. My thinking is:

1 - Make a Disc Image backup of my computer
2 - Install Catalina
3 - Install via Mac Store and appsites any apps I have
4 - Copy over Documents and Photos
5 - Open the old disc image and copy the contents of itunes into the new one.

Would this work?

 

[Taz Mangus]

Make a full backup of the computer first. Do the clean install and use Migration Assistant to copy over your user files from the backup.

 

[oxband]

Things is I want to avoid the problem I have of an Os often running an oddly high number of threads. I worry doing that will just copy the problem.

 

[casperes1996]

Your plan sounds perfectly reasonable.