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New iMac coming, need formatting advice

BobbyCat

BobbyCat

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jul 22, 2002
168
11
Beyond
Hi folks,

A new iMac's on it's way, and I intend to:
1. Force install Snow Leopard instead of Lion as the main system, through the FireWire method and a older MacBook. Yes I need to run non Lion-compatible stuff.
2. Install a BootCamp partition with Windows 7, mainly for gaming.

Question is: should the drive be formatted? I'm not familiar with Lion's new ways yet.
* A. Should I format the whole drive completely from the MacBook, thus erasing also Lion's hidden Recovery partition? Would that be desirable or even at all possible?
or
* B. Should I just erase the original Lion volume and replace it with Snow Leopard, then proceed with BootCamp?

Another thing is, if one loses Lion's original Recovery partition for some reason, is it possible to reinstall it later on?

Any suggestions appreciated. Thanks.
 
Last edited:
BobbyCat said:
Hi folks,

A new iMac's on it's way, and I intend to:
1. Force install Snow Leopard instead of Lion as the main system, through the FireWire method and a older MacBook. Yes I need to run non Lion-compatible stuff.
2. Install a BootCamp partition with Windows 7, mainly for gaming.

Question is: should the drive be formatted? I'm not familiar with Lion's new ways yet.
* A. Should I format the whole drive completely from the MacBook, thus erasing also Lion's hidden Recovery partition? Would that be desirable or even at all possible?
or
* B. Should I just erase the original Lion volume and replace it with Snow Leopard, then proceed with BootCamp?

Another thing is, if one loses Lion's original Recovery partition for some reason, is it possible to reinstall it later on?

Any suggestions appreciated. Thanks.
Click to expand...

Well, assuming the MAS will recognize you own the Lion OS when you sign in, reformatting the drive completely (or erasing and doing a zero-out pass) would probably be best. Of course, I'd suggest booting into your computer first and signing into the MAS to make sure it reflects you own Lion, this way you don't end up paying for it again if you choose to upgrade in the future.

My vote is for route A. I'm not entirely sure what the lion recovery partition would do (aside from take up some HD space) to the SL install; it might be harmless, it might not.
 
As the iMac's were out before Lion, surely Snow Leopard should just install from the disc? That's what I am planning to do. They would have shipped with SL before Lion came out.

3 Partitions, Lion, SL and Windows 7. I want to get rid of the recovery partition.
 
@ obsidian1200 and tom vilsack

Agree, I need to Carbon Copy the original Lion to an external volume first. But I'm not quite sure about the following steps, as we've never had pre-installed hidden partitions before.

Fozziebear40 said:
As the iMac's were out before Lion, surely Snow Leopard should just install from the disc? That's what I am planning to do. They would have shipped with SL before Lion came out.

3 Partitions, Lion, SL and Windows 7. I want to get rid of the recovery partition.
Click to expand...

Precisely, it looks like these Macs can only boot from SL 10.6.8, but you can't install SL in the first place from the main SL-disc 10.6.
Fortunately, some people found a trick that seems to work, by mounting the new Mac on the desktop of an older Mac through FireWire, as explained here:
* https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3330875?start=0&tstart=0
and here:
* http://www.zdnet.com/blog/governmen...pard-on-a-brand-new-lion-based-mac/10652?pg=4

Think I read somewhere that you can't get rid of the Recovery partition, but I can't tell, since I never tried. And as I understand it, BootCamp requires that there's only one single partition on the drive.
Makes me wonder what's the best route from here :confused:
 
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