Erasing an Old MacBook

[ekrueger24]

I'm sure this has been asked a million times before, and I did search and find a few answers but I just want to ask and triple confirm:

I got a new MacBook a few months ago and my mom (who is not happy with her less than 6 month old HP computer that is practically useless now) wants my old mid-2009 MacBook.

I, obviously, need to erase the hard drive and reinstall Mountain Lion on it. Is it true that all I need to do really is turn the computer on while holding command and R, select Disk Utility when the OSX Recover box comes up, then erase the hard drive? Or is it through reinstall OS X?

I know it is a fairly straight forward process, just need to know the right button to press so I don't end up screwing things up.

Thanks in advance.

 

[jav6454]

Pop in a Snow Leopard disk, then just boot from that and go to Disk Utility to erase the drive. After write zeros and that should be done.

 

[bushido]

internet recovery does not work with the mid 2009 unfortunately. i just had the same issue. what i did was make a bootable usb stick with mountain lion and then used the option key on start up

 

[ekrueger24]

Pop in a Snow Leopard disk, then just boot from that and go to Disk Utility to erase the drive. After write zeros and that should be done.

I would do that, but I would have to find a new disk drive as the optical drive on that machine burnt out and my new MacBook is a retina MacBook and therefore doesn't have the optical drive

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internet recovery does not work with the mid 2009 unfortunately. i just had the same issue. what i did was make a bootable usb stick with mountain lion and then used the option key on start up

I saw the page from Apple to download the app to make this, just wasn't fully sure I needed it. Although, I had a big feeling I did.

When you did that, I am assuming it erased your hard drive then reinstalled Mountain Lion from the USB?

Sorry for my stupidity on this matter... I'm knowledgeable about how to use Macs but when it comes to doing things like this I just am not aware... or maybe overly cautious as to not screw it all up and make the MacBook useless.

 

[bushido]

I would do that, but I would have to find a new disk drive as the optical drive on that machine burnt out and my new MacBook is a retina MacBook and therefore doesn't have the optical drive

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I saw the page from Apple to download the app to make this, just wasn't fully sure I needed it. Although, I had a big feeling I did.

When you did that, I am assuming it erased your hard drive then reinstalled Mountain Lion from the USB?

Sorry for my stupidity on this matter... I'm knowledgeable about how to use Macs but when it comes to doing things like this I just am not aware... or maybe overly cautious as to not screw it all up and make the MacBook useless.

make a bootable usb stick with your mountain lion on it

reboot your old macbook while holding cmd+r
delete your harddrive
plug in the bootable usb stick with ML on it
reboot again holding the option key
a new pop up appears where u can choose the usb drive as your ML source
install on the empty hdd

 

[ekrueger24]

make a bootable usb stick with your mountain lion on it

reboot your old macbook while holding cmd+r
delete your harddrive
plug in the bootable usb stick with ML on it
reboot again holding the option key
a new pop up appears where u can choose the usb drive as your ML source
install on the empty hdd

That makes sense... thanks a lot!