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Clean wipe and upgrading my Macbook

Z

ZenithP

macrumors newbie
Original poster
May 12, 2010
26
0
Hi everyone! I have a few questions...

I currently have the Early 2008 Base Macbook (2.1 GHz*1GB RAM). I plan on getting a Macbook Air in a few weeks, God Willing, so I wasn't sure what to do with my current Macbook since it has a few issues:

1) Some of the keys aren't working (I'm using an app on my iPhone to type on my Macbook).

2) It lags a lot. I see the beach ball all the time. I don't know if it's because I only have a few Gigs of space left, or something else.

3) It's Slow! Although it may be connected to the above problem, it only has one Gig of RAM, so that may another reason too.

I thought of just throwing it away, but I've seen recently a lot of people still*using iMacs from 2007 or old Powerbooks or whatever for heavy tasks, so I thought maybe I could get my Macbook fixed.

For the third problem, I could just buy some RAM, no problem there. For the other two, there's a place that fixes Macs, so maybe they can fix the keys.

The thing that concerns me though... Is that I have some... compromising pictures of myself and some... 'friends' of mine, I don't want others to see... I'll be in the public eye in the next few years and worried about some of these pics and vids being released (anyone remember the controversy with Frenchie from American Idol?). I don't want the repair people to see or get them, and I plan to give my Macbook to my little Sister since she wants one,*and my parents can't afford to get her a Mac right now, so I don't want to scar her hahaha...

Anyway, anyone know a program or something to completely wipe everything on my Mac? I tried simply deleting it, but somehow I find a trace of those files...

Sorry for the long story... Please help?
 
Oh, I still have Leopard by the way, and plan on upgrading all the way to Lion eventually.
 
Wipe

1) Run Disk Utility from the Mac OS X Install Disc. (It takes awhile to load since it is loading from the Disc and not the HD.)

2) Click on the drive you want to erase.

3) Click on the ERASE tab.

4) Select the type of format you want (usually one of the Mac ones.)

5) Click on SECURITY OPTIONS..., and select the highest level of security you have time for. The higher you select, the longer it takes, as it does multiple passes on the drive to erase whatever is on it.

6) Hit the ERASE... button and wait, wait, wait...

7) Reinstall Mac OS X and all the Apps.
 
Sorry for the reply. Thank you for your answer.

Unfortunately, last week I realized my macbook box was thrown away... With the disc in it...

Is it possible to do this without the disc? Or get Snow Leopard and do the clean wipe that way?
 
Throw it away? That MacBook would sell for $300-600 locally.

If you want to reinstall Leopard, you would need the original disk. Your second, and better, choice is to buy the Snow Leopard "upgrade" disk. Despite its name, it supports a full, clean install on any supported Mac. Buy the disk, repartition/format your disk, and install. Easy.
 
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