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General discussion

Wiping and Installing

by pradeep617 Mar 10, 2006 4:12PM PST

I'm new to Mac (I bought my iBook G4 this past summer) and have, unfortunately, had more than my fair share of problems (CD stopped reading CD's, corrupted HD). I wanted to wipe my hard drive and start new. I got all my old info off the HD, and was wondering how to wipe a Mac clean and start new. Thanks for any info!

Discussion is locked

6 Posts
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Wipe and start again
by mrmacfixit Forum moderator Mar 10, 2006 10:11PM PST

If you feel that this is the only course of action available to you, then this is how you proceed.
Insert the Restore CD that came with your iBook, Restart the machine while holding down the "C" key.

Once the machine has booted, follow the instructions and do a Format and Install. Note that this is not the default option.
The default option is an Archive and Install which will save all your user files, replace the system folder with a fresh one, and a bunch of other stuff, put your user files back where they came from and reapply any system preferences with what you had them set for.

As you are a new user to the Mac, are you absolutely sure that you have all your old stuff off the drive, correctly. The Mac OS puts various things into various librarys and unless you know which files, from which library, to save, you could end up with an address book with no contacts and empty email. Not to mention other third party programs that no longer function.

If you would take a word of advice, do the Archive and Install first, and if that does not fix things for you, proceed with the Format and Install.

P

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Give me your opinion...
by pradeep617 Mar 11, 2006 1:34AM PST

Here is what happened:

In December sometime, my CD-RW stopped reading CD's. So I brought it to the Genius Bar. Well, they wanted to sent it out to get fixed, but I was going on vacation the next week and wanted to bring the computer to load my digital pics on. I came back from vacation and didn't bring the computer back to get fixed until my hard drive got corrupted by a file update that I performed. I brought it back to the Genius Bar and they told me that I needed to get Disk Warrior and see if that worked. Well, that's great and all, but I don't have a CD drive from which to use Disk Warrior. So we sent it out to get the CD drive fixed first. But the people at Apple needed to be able to get onto my computer, so the Genius installed a fresh copy of OS 10.4 onto my iBook. When I got the comuter back, I purchased Disk Warrior and ran it, but the program stopped responding when it got to Step 5 "Loading Disc data." One of my friends wanted to take a look at it and he happened to be able to find my imformation (Word and Excel files, iTunes Library, iPhoto Library, in other words, all the info that was important to me). So I exported it all to my external HD. Since none of my installed programs were on the machine (MS Office, AOL IM, Firefox), I figured wiping and reinstalling would be the best option. What do you think?

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My opinion
by mrmacfixit Forum moderator Mar 11, 2006 2:28AM PST

Ok,
It would probably be best to eliminate any vestige of the old OS, the Format and Install will put you back to square one, like it was when you first got it.

Then reload your own stuff and move right along.
Disk Warrior is a very good tool, a must have for all Mac users, but I am again disappointed by the calibre of the staff that man the Genius Bar. Would it have been too much to expect them to boot your machine from an external, Firewire DVD reader, instead of installing a fresh copy of the OS on it. Did it not occur to you that if he could put a fresh copy of OS X onto your machine, a process that requires the use of a DVD reader, he could just as easily run Disk Warrior.

Good luck and let us know how the Format and Install went

P

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Mrmacfixit
by pradeep617 Mar 16, 2006 3:42PM PST

The gentleman at the Genius Bar installed a fresh copy of OSX from an external Firewire HD, not a DVD reader. Anyway, I just wanted to let you know that I Formatted and reinstalled and all is working perfectly. Thanks so much for the advice.

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macbook wipe
by searchforsafety Jun 21, 2009 12:57PM PDT

Let me explain my situation, i have a macbook that i'm trying to wipe, i don't know the administrator password, so i bought a start up disk. i restart the computer and press "C" when the noise is played, but no option screen pops up, it simply waits and then replays the tone.

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Curious,
by mrmacfixit Forum moderator Jun 21, 2009 9:52PM PDT

could you tell us more about this "startup" disk.

Do you mean that you purchased a retail copy of Mac OS X or something else?

Without that information it is a little difficult to guess what is happening

P

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