with the new macbook pros, when I follow these steps I dont see an "erase & install" option anywhere. When it says select the destination, only my harddrive appears. When I double clicked on it, an option box came up but nothing said "erase and install". Am I missing something: How to 'Erase and Install' on Macintosh computer that came with Mac OS X v10.6 Snow Leopard and later Part One: Installing the operating system 1. Power on the computer. 2. Insert the Mac OS X Install DVD into the optical drive. 3. Restart your computer. 4. Hold down the Option key while the computer starts up. 5. Select the OS X Install DVD and click the arrow underneath it to boot to the install DVD. 6. When the Mac OS X Leopard Installer screen appears, click Continue. 7. When the license agreement appears, click Agree. 8. Select the destination and click Options. 9. Select Erase and Install and click OK. The arrow on the destination changes to a green and a note on the bottom of the screen indicates you have chosen to erase the volume you selected 10. Click Continue. An Install Summary screen appears. 11. Click Install. A status bar appears on the bottom of the screen while Mac OS X installs. 12. An Additional Information screen appears, advising you that you operating system has been installed. This screen advises you that the bundled applications have not yet been installed. Click Continue. 13. An Install Succeeded screen appears. Click Restart.
Snow Leopard has no erase and install option. You have to open Disk Utility from utilities (in menu bar) and erase the HD first
when I go disk disk utility I see two options pertaining to the hard drive: the hard drive itself and then something underneath it. Can I click either one and choose erase. Are there any particular steps to take. strange that the instructions above came directly from the apple support site and it was modified in late may 2010: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3200
Choose the hard drive i.e. the one on top. Apple may have updated the OS X installer so that new SL disks have that method (or system disks) but the original disk doesn't, thus you need Disk Utility's help
The "thing" underneath the hard drive is your current partition. Click that and choose the Erase tab. Volume Format should be "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)". Give your new partition a name (think it's just Machintosh HD by default). Click the Erase button. For a more secure erase click the Options button first and choose whatever you want in there. If you just choose the standard erase it should be done really quickly. Now just quit Disk Utility and continue the install of Snow Leopard - selecting your erased HD partition as the install location.
Are you sure, that you should select the hard drive, and not the partition underneath it? I might be wrong, but i always thought it was the other way around.
ramusdoh. I think you might be right in selecting the one right underneath the harddrive. I see the hard drive and then a tab underneath with something pertaining to the hard drive, probably the partition.