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dupuytren

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Sep 27, 2014
16
2
Hi all
This evening I was in the process of factory resetting my iMac early 2009 (which has Yosemite).

Whilst trying to reset using Disk Utility, I was having some difficulty resetting the drives as I realised I have a Bootcamp partition. I tried to delete off the Bootcamp partition but the disks kept saying it was unable to unmout the disks. However I was able to erase all content from both Mac HD and Bootcamp, several times.

In any case, I did do a backup although this was a bit of a cockup . I used my backup USB external HDD to reboot the comp and found that it was rebooting back to OS 10.5.8 which was the backup from a couple of moths ago rather than earlier today.

To cut the long story short, after rebooting from the backup disk, I went back to disk utility and was able to remove the Bootcamp partition.

However, I restarted my computer and noticed that there is now no longer a Recovery HD, and the original Mac HD logo isnt there anymore either. I can only start up from my external HD and not the internal HD. Worryingly, when I am browsing around through the external HD, I am still able to access the internal HD but now it was it is 290 GB (instead of 320 GB - the boot camp partition was 30GB so somehow I have deleted this partition rather than restored it back to Mac!!!)

I just want to completely restore this darn machine back to factory settings so I can sell it. I've lost the original DVDs so feeling stuck.

Please can anyone help me?!!!
 
I believe you can buy at least Snow Leopard in DVD. Do that, install it and sell it along with the disks, which I'm sure the next buyer would appreciate. And it might get you a higher price than the cost of the SL disks.
 
Thanks for your reply.
Finally sorted this situation out.
Fortunately I had another external HD which I use to backup my Macbook Air via Time Machine. I was able to boot up my iMac using this external HD and it brought me back to the Recovery page and I was able to Erase my HD again from there (Which appears to work now) and then install Yosemite.
 
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