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How long does it take to erase a HD

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Original poster
Mar 15, 2008
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So I'm trying to perform a clean install on my 160GB MBP. It's been erasing for about an hour. Does it usually take this long?

I actually am trying to reinstall Snow Leopard after an upgrade to Lion. I didn't realize a really really important work program is PowerPC based so I need to go back to SL.

Of course...it's Sunday and I need to have it all back in order by 9am tomorrow. Great. :(
 
A clean install shouldn't take more than 30 minutes, you obviously enabled ZERO OUT in the Security Options inside Disk Utility before erasing the HDD, thus the HDD will be written to entirely with zeros, which should take around 50 minutes with a constant write speed of 50MB/s.

There is no need to ZERO OUT The HDD during a clean install.
 
simsaladimbamba said:
A clean install shouldn't take more than 30 minutes, you obviously enabled ZERO OUT in the Security Options inside Disk Utility before erasing the HDD, thus the HDD will be written to entirely with zeros, which should take around 50 minutes with a constant write speed of 50MB/s.

There is no need to ZERO OUT The HDD during a clean install.
Click to expand...

I actually did not check anything in the security options. I never clicked on it. I did what I've done in the past...boot from disk, choose drive, Erase tab. erase button. This is why I'm concerned. It's never taken this long before.
 
I'm doing the same, clicked Erase about 10 minutes ago and apart from all the options blanked out, I'm not sure it's doing anything?

Does a progress bar or any sign of life appear during this process??
 
What do you mean by "clean" install; Lion doesn't even have that option anymore.

Are you just using Disk Utility to erase and reformat before installing??

And I also wonder if you hit "erase free space" instead of "erase."

Rob
 
E3BK said:
So I'm trying to perform a clean install on my 160GB MBP. It's been erasing for about an hour. Does it usually take this long?
Click to expand...

stevearm said:
I'm doing the same, clicked Erase about 10 minutes ago and apart from all the options blanked out, I'm not sure it's doing anything?

Does a progress bar or any sign of life appear during this process??
Click to expand...

A standard erase of a 160GB 7200 rpm HD should only take much less than 1 hr.

Can't think what's gone wrong other than the HD has suddenly developed a mechanical problem.

There is no progress bar for an erase, just an activity strip at the bottom right showing names of what is being erased & reformatted.
That moves too quick to read most of it as I recall.

Please report back on the final outcome to add to the knowledge base.

In Steve's case, if there is no activity strip, I can only guess that you did not boot from the optical drive in order to perform the Disk Utility HD maintenance.
An error message under that circumstance might be helpful, but I guess there isn't one.
 
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