How to format the whole hard drive?thanks in advance.

I tried to install the whole system again, how to erase the old data and programs and install the new os?

Prepare Your Mac for Sale
Boot from the OS X Installer Disc One that came with the computer. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu. After DU loads select the startup volume from the left side list then click on the Erase tab. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled) then click on the Options button. Select the one pass Zero Data option and click on the OK button. Then click on the Erase button.
Note: You can skip the Zero Data option if you are not concerned about removing sensitive personal data from the hard drive. If you choose to skip this part of the process then it is possible for others to recover data from the hard drive. The Zero Data procedure will prevent others from getting access to your personal information.
This process will take 30 minutes to several hours depending upon the size of the hard drive. After formatting has completed quit DU and return to the installer. Now complete the OS X installation. At the completion of the installation do not restart the computer. Instead just shut it off. The next user will be presented with the Setup Assistant when they turn on the computer just as it would if new out of the box.
In the future you need to provide your OS version information and hardware configuration in your forum profile. Sort of difficult to tell you how to erase your drive and install OS X when we don't know which version of OS X you will install.

Similar Messages

I have OSX 10.6.6 MacBook Pro (Snow Leopard) and i am trying to format my whole hard drive (back to factory settings) from the original CD. Can someone please give instructions?

I have an OS X 10.6.6 MacBook Pro (Snow Leopard) and i am trying to format my whole hard drive (back to factory settings) from the original CD.
Can someone please give instructions?

Welcome to the Apple Support Communities
To restore the MacBook Pro to factory settings:
1. Make a backup of your files because everything will be erased.
2. Insert the Snow Leopard disc and press the C key while your Mac is starting to start from the DVD.
3. Go to Utilities menu > Disk Utility, select Macintosh HD on the sidebar, go to Erase tab and erase the disk.
4. Close Disk Utility and install Mac OS X

After a startup problem with my macbook pro i put it as slave and formatted the internal Hard drive. Now i want to install OS X Mavericks from USB

After a startup problem with my macbook pro i put it as slave and formatted the internal Hard drive. Now i want to install OS X Mavericks from USB
How can i do that?

What did you "put as slave?" What Mac model do you have, exactly?

HT3275 How do you Format the external hard drive been used for time machine?

Error reads "Not enough space on the external hard drive" How do i format the memory and start again?
Thanks Geremy

ON an external hard drive.. that is easy.. just open disk utility and reformat it. Make sure you use Mac Extended Journeled. (HFS+)

Advice on how to format an external hard drive for a MacBook Air

I have an external USB hard drive plugged into a 64GB MacBook Air. How should I format the hard drive so that when I run out of room on the small 64 GB SSD drive on the MacBook Air, it will start putting some iTunes or other files onto the external hard drive? I only put iTunes and other small music files on the MacBook Air in order to save room. I do have iTunes set for iCloud.

You cannot format a drive so that files will be automatically put on that drive when you run out of room on another drive. Transferring the files must be done specifically by you. You will need to learn how to manage free space on the SSD because 64 GBs is a bit small for much more than OS X.
Drive Partition and Format
1. Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder.
2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID then click on the OK button. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed.
4. Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Security button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.
6. Click on the Erase button. The format process can take up to several hours depending upon the drive size.

(T61) How to format the whole notebook to original state?

I would like to format the whole computer to its original state, but I don't know what to do. I enter the BIOS, but I cannot find any function to format the computer. And Unfortunately, I don't have any backup......and cannot use the rescue and recovery.
How can I format the computer?? Thank you.
serial no: 7663-AQ3
OS: Vista 32-bit

you can opt to obtain recovery cd set from lenovo for a nominal fee if you can ..can you explain why you cannot make the recovery cd set?
Cheers and regards,
• » νιנαｿѕαяα∂нι ѕαмανє∂αм ™ « •
●๋•کáŕádhí'ک díáŕý ツ
I am a volunteer here. I don't work for Lenovo

How to format an external hard drive for vista and snow leopard?

I want to format an external hard drive to attach to Airport Extreme base station to us with Snow Leopard and a PC with Vista. What format should I use for read/write access for both?

I use NTFS for my external drives being used on both Macs and Windows. To get the Mac to write to NTFS, you need a separate program. I use Paragon for Mac software. It works behind the scenes. There are also some free things that do the same thing but I found them cranky and unreliable. YMMV.
Windows can not read any of the Mac disk formats without additional software.. FAT32 is fine but is extremely limited.
For the last year, I have had absolutely no problems on any computer, Mac or Windows.

How to exculde the second hard drive backup from time machine of lion os

My Mac Pro 2010 mid version is using Mac Lion OS, and I have installed three internal hard drives (two 3T hard drives for storage one 2T hard drive for time machine hard drive). When I start to run the time machine to backup the system hard drive, the time machine will include those internal hard drives automatically, and it stop backup and claim time machine is lack of storage space. Of course I know it is not big enough to backup those extra hard drive. However, I just only need to backup the system drive only, but I cannot locate any setting related how to exclude other internal hard drive in time machine. So I still cannot backup my system drive yet.

See:
http://pondini.org/TM/10.html
10. Can I exclude things from Time Machine backups?

HT1338 how to format an external hard drive for MacOSX

I have a new Fantom hard drive, but ut is formatted with NTFS file system. How do I format it for my mac mini? The instructions from Fantom say to use the Disc Utility...but also warn to reformat with HFS. Will this be done when I chose Disc Utility, or do I need other software?

55heyjude wrote:
ok...the Apple store tech says just to format using the Disc Utility...
And that is exactly what mende1 said as well, he just gave you a little more of the steps than the Tech did, thank him and format your disk.

How to format an external hard drive previously run on win. xp

I am trying to get into my external hard drive to edit or delete some old data that is no longer needed. I can get onto the hard drive but not remove any of the data, nor can I change the location of the files. Does anybody know how i can do this? I do have iWork'09. The store I bought the system from said that it would convert my files to be usable on my MAC.

Windows has 2 HD formats, FAT32 and NTFS.
The newer NTFS is not directly supported in OSX.
Try:
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/24481/ntfs-3g
or
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/30449/ntfs-for-mac
to see if they can mount and read the drive for you.
If you have a real problem, back-up your hard drive to a PC and reformat the drive to FAT32. Then return the files onto the HD and it should read OK on your Mac. Alternatively back the files up onto CD/DVDs these can be easily read on your Mac as well.
Peter

How to format an external hard drive - to be accessed by mac and pc

I have four large video files on my mac pro that I to transfer to a friend's external hard drive. It's a new hard drive so is unformatted at present. My friend has a Vista laptop and XP PC which I know won't recognise a Mac formatted drive.
What is the easiest and quickest way to transfer the files (approx 90GB each) to the hard drive. I did consider networking but that might take ages!! :-(( Once on the external drive, my friend wants edit them.
Thanks for your help in advance.

Format ur external Hard Disk with HFS format then access it from windows by (HFS Explorer) here is the link of that software
http://hem.bredband.net/catacombae/hfsx.html
you can extract anything from HFS format hard disks..the program is free also

Is a disk image of the whole hard drive a good way of backing up your files?

I have to make a backup of my macbook pro because its being taken to the technician.
I wanted to know if creating a disk image of the whole internal hard drive to an external one using disk utility is a good and secure way?
After this I would erase my hard drive using this thread : OS X Mavericks: Erase and reinstall OS X
Is this a good procedure? I not which one would be the best one? I read something about bootable clones but I don't seem to fully understand it and I don't know if its what im looking for.
Your help would be awesome!
Thanks!

Disk Utility>Restore will copy the OSX, the Recovery Partition and ALL user data. It will be an identical copy of the internal HDD.
Third party software such as Carbon Copy Cloner can also perform that same function, but also allow for incremental changes.
Ciao.

How to share the entire hard drive with only one group

We want to share our entire hard drive with our staff, plus share Web folders with our customers plus the staff. We'd like our customers to have no permissions at all for the share point at the root of the drive, so it won't even be presented as a volume for them to mount.
The problem is that when we make the root of the drive a share point, we need to give read-only permissions to Everyone, or we break services. Read-only for Everyone makes our drive readable by any of our customers, which is obviously not good. This seems like it would be a common task for anyone running a server with customer folders on it. Is there a way to share the whole drive with our staff, and only our staff? Thanks.

First... You are not making your boot drive the share point are you????? Only share an entire drive if the drive is ONLY used for data (not OS).
You need to make mroe than one share point.
You can have one share point which is the Data drive and another share point which is the customer folder within.
You can have share points which exist within share points.
Jeff

I want to backup my photos to a WD My Passport, and also have a PC in the house. Is it okay to format the external hard drive to FAT 32?

Want to back up/save my photos to an external hard drive both for safety and for portability. I use an iMac, but everyone else in the family uses PC, so ideally I'd like to be able to use the drive on both systems. I have been looking online and it looks like FAT32 may be the answer. As I'm sure you can tell I am new to all this and just wanted to check that formatting the My Passport to this format will be agreeable to the Apple operating system. I have an iMac, iPad 3 and iPhone 5, if this makes any difference.
Any advice would be appreciated.
Alex

I would use a FAT 32 filesystem only for files you will be sharing with Windows. It is an old, feature-poor filesystem. Of course that excludes any application files that are not Windows compatible (including Time Machine...). You should not think of it as a backup drive.
I would backup all the files on your internal drive onto a separate drive using Time Machine or Carbon Copy Cloner. It is easier an safer to backup everthing. Also, maintining more than one backup is prudent so have at least two backup disks. See this thread for more extensive backup advice.
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5377719?tstart=480
Disks are inexpensive. Losing your data is not.
For FAT32 characteristics see: http://www.ntfs.com/ntfs_vs_fat.htm

Re: How to use the second hard drive in Satellite A300?

I have been given a second hand Satellite A300 that was being thrown out due to a faulty DVD.
I fixed the DVD and have a perfect working system.
On opening the case I discovered it has 2 x 250GB hard drives. I checked CMOS and the 2 drives show. Yet, Vista only shows the one drive.
Excuse my ignorance but how do I access the second drive?

I have Satellite A300 with two hard drives and each HDD has other operating system. Both HDDs are recognized properly.
I dont know what is wrong there but both HDDs should be recognized automatically.
Try to set BIOS to default settings and check it again.
Try to start bootable Microsoft installation disc and check if both HDDs are shown in setup.
I just hope there is no some hardware problem.

How to format the whole hard drive?thanks in advance.

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for