how to format ibook g4 hard drive with broken optical drive

[slee8251]

I have an ibook g4 with a broken dvd rom drive. I want to format my hard drive and the only way i can think of doing this is by inserting a install dvd and going into disk utility. Since I have a broken optical drive, is there another option to format my hard drive? Thanks in advance

 

[MacHamster68]

yes target disc mode , just needs another Mac

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1661

 

[OrangeSVTguy]

Any cheap external USB DVD drive should work too if the previous poster's advice doesn't work for your situation.

 

[tom vilsack]

Any cheap external USB DVD drive should work too if the previous poster's advice doesn't work for your situation.

ive never been able to boot a ibook form a external usb dvd..........firewire external dvd would work.

 

[OrangeSVTguy]

ive never been able to boot a ibook form a external usb dvd..........firewire external dvd would work.

I've booted many different G3/G4/G5 PPC Macs from external USB DVD/RW drives. Guess not all USB optical drives work then.

 

[MacHamster68]

i managed never to boot any ppc Mac of a usb dvd drive and i have quiet a few Mac's(16 with usb port) and usb dvd drives , from liteon ,lg ,panasonic and samsung none of them works for booting ,btw the panasonic and the liteon had been internal drives of 2 of my eMac's ( taken out to be replaced with second HDD) neither had i luck with usb hdd's

but i did hear that some managed to boot of usb devices on ppc Mac's

 

[slee8251]

yea i tried an external usb optical drive; didn't work i will try the target disc mode later on today