Reformatting mac hardrive?

tom26 · 27 Jul 2011 at 10:58

I posted this in the hardware forum but guess it may be more suited here:
I don't know whether any of you will remember but I managed to buy a used Mac for £50 a week ago. Knowing absolutely nothing about Macs, I was advised that the hard drive needed reformating and that the discs weren't with the machine. Does anyone know firstly how I reformat and secondly where I get the discs from to reformat?

Thanks

Marky · 27 Jul 2011 at 11:38

I recently formatted my drive and reinstalled Snow Leopard with the help of some people on this forum

I just inserted the SL CD and reboot my mac. I then held down the C button which allows you to boot from the CD. Then I used Disk Utility to perform a "zero'd" format of the hard drive and then went on to install the OS from there.

You'll need a copy of the OS to reinstall though - So that'll mean you buying a copy.

8t10 · 27 Jul 2011 at 11:44

Snow Leopard might still be available from Apple Stores until Lion is available in physical format. I've not been down to one recently.

Can your Mac take Snow Leopard do you know? It needs to have an Intel chip.

tom26 · 27 Jul 2011 at 11:48

8t10 said:
Snow Leopard might still be available from Apple Stores until Lion is available in physical format. I've not been down to one recently.

Can your Mac take Snow Leopard do you know? It needs to have an Intel chip.

It has an intel core due processor, so I would take it that means yes?

Is it just a case of buying the latest operating system and then I can use this to wipe everything effectively?

pingwing · 27 Jul 2011 at 17:07

tom26 said:
It has an intel core due processor, so I would take it that means yes?

Is it just a case of buying the latest operating system and then I can use this to wipe everything effectively?

More or less, if its the old core processors lion doesnt support it

so you'll just need a copy of snow leopard instead, which was £25 quid when I got the disc...

From that you can use the disk utility in the installer to format your drive and start over

Chris344 · 27 Jul 2011 at 17:56

I wanted a clean install after upgrading to Lion, I went in to disk management, formatted the drive then recovered Lion in which it downloaded from Apple which took for ever then installed but it retained all my files and settings. Not sure now but would like to know

CircleFaust · 29 Apr 2016 at 15:16

hi
my macbook pro 2010, is just closing downing (crashing) every other day now
i have the discs from when i bought it
thinking a format and clean install is best

how do i keep all my information?
i use an SSD.