Wipe my hard drive and restore

Just like the title says, I do not know the steps to complete this funtion.

What OS X version, please?

Similar Messages

  • How can I wipe my hard drive and restore to factory settings without the use of the original OS CD?

    I have a 2010 MacBook and I need to wipe the hard drive and restore to factory settings.
    The problem is that even though I have the original disc, the CD drive has stopped functioning and will reject any disc put into it.
    Therefore, is there another method to do this without the CD?

    Not very easily.  To restore to factory software you need the original installation DVD (CDs).
    If you have another Mac which is the same make and model so that those installation DVD (CDs) would work, you can use a Firewire cable between the 2 Macs and then put your Mac to be reset into Target mode and use the other Mac to install the software.  However I suspect that is unlikely.

  • How do I back up my itunes to an external hard drive and restore from same if necessary

    How do I back up my entire itunes to an external hard drive and restore from same if necessary.
    Thanks

    This is where iTunes stores backups for different operating systems: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4946
    I do not use a Windows machine, have a Windows Vista Dell I rarely startup now.  But, from what I remember with Win boxes is, you will have to create on the external hard drive a file system like that one iTunes normally uses, and then in the iTunes preferences or control panel edit the location for the storage to specify the name of the external hard drive, or its letter code, with the name of that file system you created on the exernal drive.
    I would also move all of the files from the internal file system to the external since you have now told iTunes that is where they are...before deleting from the internal drive, test iTunes to see that it goes where you want it to go.

  • If I upgraded my MacBook Pro from Snow Leopard to Lion via the web and now wish to erase the hard drive and restore it to factory settings to sell.  How do I accomplish this?

    I upgraded the operating system on my MacBook Pro from Snow Leopard to Lion via the web.  Now I need to erase the hard drive and restore it to factory settings, so that I can pass it on.  How do I accomplish this?  When I insert the Mac OS X install disk, the only option is to erase the free space.  Any insight would be appreciated.
    Thank you

    You need to boot off the original Snow Leopard DVD's that came with the system.
    Once you are running off of the DVD you will be able to do a clean install of SL
    To boot off the DVD with the system up running Lion insert the DVD. Open Sytem Preferences->Startup Disk and select the DVD then restart the machine.
    Message was edited by: Frank Caggiano

  • I'm getting the grey screen during start up and can't boot the computer. I did a cmnd R but worried it would automatically wipe my hard drive and reinstall OS.  Is there a risk at cmnd R will result in wiped HD without me actively making that choice?

    I'm getting the grey screen during start up and can't boot the computer - MacBook Pro with lion.
    I did a command r after doing some research but got nervous that it would automatically wipe my hard drive and reinstall OS.
    I was nervous because it asked me for language for software use before any options were presented (such as repair via disk utility). It looked similar to an OS install.So I powered off....Is there a risk at command r will result in wiped HD without me actively making that choice?

    Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions - Mavericks, Lion/Mountain Lion
    Boot to the Recovery HD:
    Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND and R keys until the menu screen appears. Alternatively, restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager screen appears. Select the Recovery HD and click on the downward pointing arrow button.
    Repair
    When the recovery menu appears select Disk Utility. After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list.  In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive.  If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported then click on the Repair Permissions button. When the process is completed, then quit DU and return to the main menu. Select Restart from the Apple menu.
    Reinstall Mountain Lion or Mavericks
    OS X Mavericks- Reinstall OS X
    OS X Mountain Lion- Reinstall OS X
         Note: You will need an active Internet connection. I suggest using Ethernet if possible because it is
                    three times faster than wireless.

  • How can I wipe my hard drive and clean install Mountain Lion?

    Hi I have a 21.5 inch mid 2011 iMac running Mountain Lion, I want to wipe my hard drive and clean install Mountain Lion. I dont want all my stuff back, just photos and music, the rest I'll reinstall my self. I also dont have a exteranl harddrive. only two USB's one 2 GB and the other 8 GB. How do I do this? And I dont want to pay for mountain lion again. Thanks!

    I made my partition and am currently reinstalling mountain lion to put on my flash drive. I'm using Lion disk maker 2 thats compatible with mountain lion. I'm doing it right, correct?

  • How do I wipe my hard drive and start again iMac ?

    My hard drive is now full of junk and I want to wipe my hard drive and re-instal from time machine.
    Not quite sure how to start.

    Safari Bookmarks are in ~/Library/Safari/Bookmarks.plist

  • HT4848 Hello- My laptop needs the OS X recovery run. Can I download the software directly to a thumb drive without affecting my desktop unit? The Geek Squad said they need to wipe my hard drive and re-install the operating system. Thanks.

    Hello- My laptop needs the OS X recovery run. Can I download the software directly to a thumb drive without affecting my desktop unit? The Geek Squad said they need to wipe my hard drive and re-install the operating system. Thanks.

    They already damaged you Mac by fooling with the BootCamp partition without knowing what they were doing. I wouldn't suggest haveing them help you do anything.
    Here is the article that describes the Recovery HD: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4718?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US
    First, see if you can boot into the Recovery HD. Restart and hold down cmd-r until you see the gray screen. It should boot into Recovery. If your Mac shipped with Lion or Mountain Lion, it will boot into Internet Recovery if it cannot boot into the Recovery HD on the hard drive.
    They should have tried this at the store.

  • I just replaced my hard drive and restored everything from Time machine. However, I am unable to open iphoto and the following message appears Your photo library was not found. Do you want to find your iPhoto Library?

    I just replaced my hard drive and restored everything from Time machine. However, I am unable to open iphoto and the following message appears Your photo library was not found. Do you want to find your iPhoto Library?
    Where do I find this library?
    thanks
    Shak

    Twas quite a hassle if I am honest which was eventually resolved but I don't feel qualified to help anyone through the process as it required a trip to my local apple store and a genius bar appointment.
    Personally, I would do anything like moving pictures out of folders etc. Certainly not creating a new users. i don't think that is an elegant solution
    Try the following which MAY just about rescue the situation for you but if they don't work you may have to do something more drastic.
    (1) Holding down Cmd & Alt at the same time, start iPhoto by clicking on the iPhoto icon. From the resulting menu choose Rebuild photo library by selecting all available options given to you and then pressing REBUILD!
    If that doesn't work
    (2) Fire up Utilities. Go to migration assistant. Chose 'From another Time machine back-up'. Open the 'Users' option that comes up next and from there select Pictures, then uncheck everything else like Applications etc (you don't want to do a full migration of everything) and click go.
    If that doesn't work, take a deep breath and this step is rather complicated but it worked for me. First of all close iPhoto! Then go to new Finder window.
    From the Finder window choose Pictures, then iPhoto library, press CMD and the letter i. It brings up a new window. Go to Sharing & permissions. From there select the padlock to unlock settings. and then select User account, then press the 'cog' icon next to +/- abd choose Apply to enclosed items.
    This may take a while. Once completed, re-open iPhoto.
    And that should (I stress should) cure it.
    Good luck.

  • How do i reformat imac hard drive and restore time machine backup?

    How do I reformat my iMac internal hard drive and restore from a Time Machine backup?
    I have an iMac 20" Mid 2007 with a problematic hard drive.
    IntelCore 2 Duo, Processor speed 2 Ghz
    800 Mhz Bus speed
    4 GB RAM
    250 GB Western Digital Hard Drive
    10.6.3
    Was getting a question mark upon booting up, so I booted from a 10.6.3 Snow Leopard CD and ran disk utility. Repair disk was interrupted with an error message. 'Disk utility can't repair disk. Backup files, reformat disk and restore backed up files.'
    1. Should I select Erase, Mac OS Extended Journaled, Erase?
    2. If I do this, won't I lose my networkability, and therefore lose access to Time Machine backups?
    3. If it were you, would you go ahead and replace the hard drive? Not sure I should trust this hard drive!
    4. If I need to replace the hard drive, can you send instructions?
    Thanks!

    Clean Install of Snow Leopard
         1. Boot the computer using the Snow Leopard Installer Disc or the Disc 1 that came
             with your computer.  Insert the disc into the optical drive and restart the computer.
             After the chime press and hold down the  "C" key.  Release the key when you see
             a small spinning gear appear below the dark gray Apple logo.
         2. 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 hard drive entry from the left side list (mfgr.'s ID and drive
             size.)  Click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.  Set the number of
             partitions to one (1) from the Partitions drop down menu, click on Options button
             and select GUID, click on OK, then set the format type to MacOS Extended
             (Journaled, if supported), then click on the Apply button.
         3. When the formatting has completed quit DU and return to the installer.  Proceed
             with the OS X installation and follow the directions included with the installer.
         4. When the installation has completed your computer will Restart into the Setup
             Assistant. Be sure you configure your initial admin account with the exact same
             username and password that you used on your old drive. After you finish Setup
             Assistant will complete the installation after which you will be running a fresh
             install of OS X.  You can now begin the update process by opening Software
             Update and installing all recommended updates to bring your installation current.
    Download and install Mac OS X 10.6.8 Update Combo v1.1.
    If you have your Time Machine backup drive connected, then you can use Setup Assistant to migrate your Home folder, application support files, and third-party applications and system preference files. I recommend doing this via the Setup Assistant when the option appears.

  • I need to wipe my hard drive and I am worried about losing all of my emails once my computer is set up again. What do I need to do to prevent this?

    I have Windows XP on my computer and I need to wipe my hard drive and install Windows 7. I have a lot of very sensitive emails that I cannot lose ( I use Thunderbird for my email). What do I need to do to back up the emails so that I do not lose them? Do you store the data online or is it on my computer? Thanks so much!

    Backup your profile.
    http://kb.mozillazine.org/Thunderbird_:_FAQs_:_Backing_Up_and_Restoring

  • I just replaced my hard drive and restored everything from Time machine. However, my itunes is empty.  No music, movies etc are there.  Please help thanks

    I just replaced my hard drive and restored everything from Time machine. However, my itunes is empty.  No music, movies etc are there.  Please help thanks

    Empty/corrupt library after upgrade/crash
    Hopefully it's not been too long since you last upgraded iTunes, in fact if you get an empty/incomplete library immediately after upgrading then with the following steps you shouldn't lose a thing or need to do any further housekeeping. In the Previous iTunes Libraries folder should be a number of dated iTunes Library files. Take the most recent of these and copy it into the iTunes folder. Rename iTunes Library.itl as iTunes Library (Corrupt).itl and then rename the restored file as iTunes Library.itl. Start iTunes. Should all be good, bar any recent additions to or deletions from your library.
    Windows images, but you get the point. Depending on the age of your library the library file might not include the .itl extention. Make it match the file you are replacing.
    See MusicFolder Files Not Added and Super Remove Dead Tracks for tools to catch up with any changes since the backup file was created.
    tt2

  • Backing up images on external hard drive and restoring to new internal driv

    I recently purchased a new external hard drive and a new internal hard drive. Before installing the new internal drive, I backed up the old internal drive on the external drive. Then I installed the new internal drive to my Macbook Pro. However, when I tried to access and print my Aperture images on the new internal drive, I received an error message saying "versions with unavailable master images cannot be printed." I clicked on 'show referenced files," but couldn't determine how to recover my master images. I checked the forum and under "referenced files go offline after restore from a backup" it said to go to "File>manage referenced files" but nothing else. How can I recover my master images? Please help - I have nearly 6000 images that are lost without recovering the master images. And no, I was ultra stupid in not placing everything in a vault = but I'm relatively new to Mac OS and thought a backup would be sufficient. Thank!

    The volume name of the new hard drive needs to be the same as the old hard drive - rename it if you have to - then they should be fine.
    If you cannot seem to make this work then you will have to reconnect them with locate referenced files under the file menu. Select all the files that are disconnected before going into the dialog.
    RB

  • Time machine will not backup to empty external hard drive after replacing Mac's internal hard drive and restoring

    First - I live in a tiny fishing village in Belize, so getting support here is virtually non-existent. There is no one else in my village who even uses a Mac. Recently, my hard drive in my 2012 Macbook Pro 13" went bad (said it suffered a "shock"?) and I was traveling to Cozumel, Mexico, so had it replaced there. We used an external hard drive backup to restore the data to it's last time machine backup (October of 2014). Everything was working fine, until I returned home, added some pictures, and wanted to do a fresh backup. Now, time machine will start the backup, but gets about 113,000 of 181,000 done, and it locks up. I can do nothing - everything freezes, and I have to eventually power down the computer. I even tried deleting the old backup from the external hard drive, erasing it completely, and reformatting the external hard drive using disk utility. Still locking up. It is a 5 GB external hard drive, so space shouldn't be an issue, and it was backed up to the same external hard drive previously with no issues. I'm still running Mavericks, and don't want to try to upgrade to Yosemite until I can be sure I have a backup of my old data and pictures. I am a writer, and use that to make my meager living LOL
    I'm stumped. I've looked through the files endlessly but can't find anything similar to my issue. Any suggestions? I know just enough to be dangerous, and don't want to lose everything we worked so hard to retrieve when my hard drive crashed last month.
    Thanks!

    SMH5206 - I tried letting it sit and crank overnight twice. First time I thought it was my error causing it to lock up. Now I know better. I haven't changed any of my time machine settings - and actually never used time machine regularly. Only reason I had a fresh backup from last Oct was because I did one before I upgraded to mavericks. Everything worked fine then - and we used that to restore when the hard drive crashed and was replaced. I have actually deleted hundreds of pictures off my hard drive and one entire user, so it should actually be a much smaller backup - so if it did it before on the same external hard disk, I don't understand why it won't now.  I'm really confused.
    Kahjot - the external hard drive is the same one I backed up to previously - and I have completely erased it and reformatted, and the information I'm backing up now is less, so there should be no reason why it doesn't have enough room now, when there is actually less information on my current hard drive (see my reply to SMH5206). When I plug it in, it says it is a 500.07 GB WD "My Passport"
    I've even tried to have time machine only backup certain files, and not the whole thing. Still locking up.
    I'm sure it's my error somewhere, - I just don't know how or where

  • '09 MacBook Pro won't start up after installing new hard drive and restoring from an external hard drive.

    I am in the process of replacing my hard drive and have run into a problem. I reinstalled OSX 10.6.3 using a DVD I bought off Amazon. That went well and I then restored my hard drive using an external and Time Machine.
    After that, things still looked good but I couldn't log in to my user (and access my MacBook) because my password wasn't working even though my hint was correct. Yes, I am POSITIVE my password was correct; I even tried a couple other passwords to humor myself. I then gave up and decided to restart the computer.
    Now my MacBook won't start up at all. It goes o a gray screen with a still loading symbol for a couple minutes and then goes to a solid light blue screen. I've tried starting up while holding command+R and I tied holding just command and neither worked.
    Did I install the wrong OSX because I didn't use the same DVD that came with the laptop? Is there something wrong with my hard drive already?
    Please help =[

    You probably bought the wrong RAM that has different pin assignments, so it won't fit in the slot. Return it.
    I bought 4GB Memory online for my MacBook, so I could get it to run twice as fast.
    Doubling the memory does not make your computer run twice as fast.

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