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Hard Drive Help!

O

Ov3rlord Falc0r

macrumors regular
Original poster
Apr 29, 2009
164
0
So...my girlfriend bought a late 2008 white macbook off ebay. (First mistake) She didn't include me in the purchase. (Second mistake) But she was trying to surprise me by wanting to switch to mac. So I guess I can forgive her because she was trying to be sweet. :rolleyes:

Anyways, she purchased one but when it got here the guy didn't do a reinstall of Leopard before he sent it so it has his user name, password, information, and a few trojans all on the hard drive. (The trojans are all from files he downloaded with Limewire).

Well I tried inserting the OS X disk into the drive and doing it that way but it is asking for his password to do anything and he wont tell us it so we're stuck. Last night I partitioned the drive using 'disk utility' and did a clean install of OS X on the new half for my GF so she could at least start using it for her stuff.

My question is, how can I erase the old half (with his stuff on it) and combine it with my GF's new half to make the hard drive whole again?

BTW, I'm pretty tech savvy so I can understand what to do if someone would care to explain.
 
Did you use Disk Utility via Target Disk Mode (two Macs connected via Firewire and one Mac booted as an external drive)?
If so, why didn't you just re-formatted the whole drive?

If you just used Disk Utility while booted on the new MacBook, I don't know of a way to join partitions.

But if you have another Mac or an external drive, you could copy the new generated user (your girlfriend's) and reinstall the whole OS (and while you're at it, use Disk Utility before installing: http://macs.about.com/od/applications/ss/diskutilformat_5.htm ), and later use the copied user with the Migration Assistant and copy back the user with all her settings.
 
Shoot, I wish I would have known about the password reset before last night. That would have come in handy. Oh well, live and learn right?!

I started a reformat of his half of the hard drive last night but its taking a ridiculously long time to format. We're coming up on 16+ hours to format 79.09GB of hard drive. Is that normal? Once its done will I be able to combine the two halves since they'll be formatted the the same format type?

If not, how do I do a whole hard drive reformat and install OSX again?
 
as far as i know you should be able ot recombine the two partitions, Im not too sure if the 16+ hours thing is normal as I dont have that much experience of formatting hard drives. That said it does seem like a long time.

Im suprised the vendor didnt give your GF his password to allow her clear it off. Is the MacBook working ok on the new partition, no evidence of virus damage etc?

EDIT: Oh and with regard to refomatting the wohle HD i think thats done through disk utility also.
 
spinnerlys said:
Did you use Disk Utility via Target Disk Mode (two Macs connected via Firewire and one Mac booted as an external drive)?
If so, why didn't you just re-formatted the whole drive?

If you just used Disk Utility while booted on the new MacBook, I don't know of a way to join partitions.

But if you have another Mac or an external drive, you could copy the new generated user (your girlfriend's) and reinstall the whole OS (and while you're at it, use Disk Utility before installing: http://macs.about.com/od/applications/ss/diskutilformat_5.htm ), and later use the copied user with the Migration Assistant and copy back the user with all her settings.
Click to expand...

We didn't connect the macbooks via Firewire because my unibody doesn't have Firewire. Lol. She doesn't have any saved information and hasn't changed too many of her settings yet, she's pretty much just broused the internet a little bit.

Would formatting the whole hard drive then reinstalling Leopard make the hard drive whole again?
 
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