About to clean install Lion -- what to do for SSD

[nachorob]

I have a Macbook Pro 5,3 with the Apple installed 256 GB SSD.

I'm going to do a Lion clean install, because I have too much crap (~ 5 GB free now) on here and I like to start fresh every so often and only install the things I actually use.

What should I do with Disk Utility (or whatever) to properly pave the SSD and (hopefully) reset it back to zero? From what I've read doing Disk Utility's 'secure erase' is not what I want... Should I just delete the existing partition and create a new one and go nuts with Lion?

(Oh, I'll be using a bootable Lion usb stick if that matters).

Thanks!

 

[wrldwzrd89]

I have little to no experience with SSDs, but nuking the partition map seems like the best approach to me, given what you're trying to do.

 

[r0k]

I have a Macbook Pro 5,3 with the Apple installed 256 GB SSD.

I'm going to do a Lion clean install, because I have too much crap (~ 5 GB free now) on here and I like to start fresh every so often and only install the things I actually use.

What should I do with Disk Utility (or whatever) to properly pave the SSD and (hopefully) reset it back to zero? From what I've read doing Disk Utility's 'secure erase' is not what I want... Should I just delete the existing partition and create a new one and go nuts with Lion?

(Oh, I'll be using a bootable Lion usb stick if that matters).

Thanks!

I assume you have your stuff backed up somewhere besides Time Machine. The time to learn about a corrupted TM backup is BEFORE you wipe Macintosh HD.

From the Lion USB stick you can go in Disk Utility and pick new partition scheme, single partition HFS+ and apply. At that point your SSD is wiped, formatted and empty. You can then install Lion and you are good to go. Sorry I haven't done this so I don't know if the normal Lion install "brings back" the hidden recovery partition but I would expect it to do so.

Are you sure you need to wipe and install just to free up space? You might try cloning with CCC. When you clone the disk you booted from with CCC, it doesn't do block copy and it leaves behind temp files and cruft. A lot of space can be freed up that way. Simply plug in a disk that is 250 MB or greater, create an empty HFS+ partition and use CCC to clone Macintosh HD to that drive. Then boot from that drive (holding down opt) and see how much space is free. I got 30 gig back one time using CCC. It turns out that failed TM backups sometimes get written to Macintosh HD. Yes I know it's dumb but I've heard it's true. CCC won't clone that stuff.