Benefits of reformatting and reinstalling OS X on MacBook Air, I need disk space!?

[iMore Question]

Benefits of reformatting and reinstalling OS X on MacBook Air. I need disk space.

I have 2.17GB available of 120.14GB total on a 2011 MacBook Air running OS X v.10.11.4. I don't have space to update to the latest
OS version. I have a recent Time Machine backup on a HD connected to the USB port. I don't know if reformatting and reinstalling
will restore some of my disk space.

 

[anon(9602380)]

Welcome to iMore!

Formatting and reinstalling from a Time Machine backup is going to do very little for you. What you really need to do is either delete some things or put some of it on an external drive that you can access it from.