How to format a Mac?

Boot from the original OSX install CD's ( by pressing 'C' during boot-up) and reformat the drive with the disk utility. Then, reinstall OSX, and you're good to go.

what are you trying to format

stuff99 said:

Hi everyone,

I'm still relatively new to the mac world of things so I was wondering how you format a mac?

I've never done it before...I've only formatted a PC before...

any heads up for me on how to do that?

At work we have to sell one of our Macs so we want to format everything off it for security purposes before we sell it off.

Thanks in advance!

Click to expand...

In the Mac it is called erase. In the Utilities folder you will find the disk utility, it can help you to format external drives.

Here is a document from Apple about doing a secure erase, as well: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=DiskUtility/10.5/en/duh1011.html. In particular, if this is a company computer or one that has any sensitive information on it, you will want to make sure to do the secure erase so that whoever buys the system is not able to run a restore utility to retrieve data you tried to erase.

getting rid of a swap partition

I loaded ubuntu on the windows partition. No problem. I wanted to get rid of it, nor problem removing the home and "/" parttion. Now the swap partition will not delete. Ive tried the install disk and holding down C, that took me to the language part. I went thru the process of deleting partitions but when I get to the part of chosing which partition to use mac hd is there. But the swap from ubuntu isnt there. When I put in the install disk, hold down option the windows patrtition shows up and I get a grb error because nothing is there.
it wants to install with the os x disk but then I get a black screen at the end.
I need some software to go in and and hit all the partitions and kill them all and have a partition free drive. How I didnt ramble on and cufuse the hell outta ya.

Might want to start a new thread instead of bumping one almost two years old.

vansouza said:

In the Mac it is called erase. In the Utilities folder you will find the disk utility, it can help you to format external drives.

Click to expand...

what about to do if i have this kind of msg??? plssss

Secure Erase Free Space failed with the error:

Could not create temp file

nayoohlaing said:

what about to do if i have this kind of msg??? plssss

Secure Erase Free Space failed with the error:

Could not create temp file

Click to expand...

Do you use Disk Utility while booted into regular Mac OS X or while booted from the Restore or Installation DVD?
If it is the former, try the latter.

If that also fails, can you tell us the capacity of the HDD you want to run this action on and how much free space it has and when it was last completely erased and how much of the HDD's capacity used as maximum?

Reformatting Mac

I am transferring my daugthers 4 year old white macbook to my son. I would like to reformat and start clean with him but I don't want to lose the Microsoft Word for Mac. Is there there a way to do this and preserve that program?

dkwhite58 said:

I am transferring my daugthers 4 year old white macbook to my son. I would like to reformat and start clean with him but I don't want to lose the Microsoft Word for Mac. Is there there a way to do this and preserve that program?

Click to expand...

Any reason you can't just re-install MS office afterwards?

If it were me, I would skip the reinstall and just create a new user for your son, and maybe delete your daughter's user account. That way you keep your applications, but he can set it up how he likes.

ScoobyMcDoo said:

Any reason you can't just re-install MS office afterwards?

If it were me, I would skip the reinstall and just create a new user for your son, and maybe delete your daughter's user account. That way you keep your applications, but he can set it up how he likes.

Click to expand...

I would do this as well. The computer and MS Office will still showed as registered to him and the computer name and printers installed will still be what it was when he had it, but everything else will be customized to her.

unfreeze macbook keyboard

stuff99 said:

Hi everyone,

I'm still relatively new to the mac world of things so I was wondering how you format a mac?

I've never done it before...I've only formatted a PC before...

any heads up for me on how to do that?

At work we have to sell one of our Macs so we want to format everything off it for security purposes before we sell it off.

Thanks in advance!

Click to expand...

i just wanna say thanks because you saved me a lot of trouble time and money,my macbook,s keyboard just stopped functioning after i installed a newer ios version,i tried every thing i thought i should dofor 3 days,i googled for a solution,nothing useful untill i came across this discussion and tried your suggestion and it worked 4me,so thank you so much mate for the help