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Restoring a Mac To Factory Settings.

I

iMacBoy

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Dec 24, 2009
363
0
Hi,

On the Apple website the Tutorial for Restoring a Mac to Factory settings says that i should go to disk utility and erase the 'Macintosh HD' first before i put the Snow leopard CD in to reinstall it.

What would happen if i did not erase the HD first?

and i just went straight in the reinstall it with the CD with all my data still on my Mac?

Would it still restore it as new as it would of if i would have erased the HD?

Thanks, i know it's a little petty thing but i just want to know the answer.
 
DewGuy1999

DewGuy1999

macrumors 68040
Jan 25, 2009
3,194
6
Snow Leopard by default does what used to be called "archive and install" and essentially keeps all your user data, to eliminate that you have to do an "Erase and Install".

Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard Review:
Previous versions of Mac OS X offered several install options: "Upgrade" (mixing new system files in with old ones), "Archive and Install" (moving old files aside, then installing new ones), and "Erase and Install" (erasing your drive first). Snow Leopard offers no choices — it combines the "upgrade" and "archive" approaches by installing new software, then deleting the old system. To reduce compatibility problems, it also disables any drivers or kernel extensions it doesn't know about, moving them into a holding directory.

"Archive and Install" avoided issues with old software hanging around and causing problems with the new operating system, and the new approach offers the benefits of that, without leaving behind old files to clean up. But if you want to perform an "Erase and Install", you'll have to restart from the Snow Leopard DVD (or an external hard drive) and erase the hard disk yourself (in GUID format), using Disk Utility. Once Snow Leopard has installed itself on the empty hard drive and restarted, it offers to migrate your applications, data and settings from another hard drive or backup. ​
 
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