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Resolved Reformat MacBook Air

S

Scuba629

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jul 14, 2010
249
5
I did some searching and it looks like to reinstall Lion on my MacBook I press cmd + r while its booting up.

If this is correct how to I wipe the drive? Is there a utility that fully formats the drive? Or does it only do a quick format?

I'm kinda crazy when it comes to left over files and or old data do a full format is preferred.
 
Last edited:
Make a USB Lion drive by following the steps here:
https://www.macrumors.com/2011/08/08/apple-releases-utility-to-create-lion-recovery-usb-key/


Boot whilst holding down the Option key.

Perform a claen install

If you wish, format the drive first by entering disk utility from the screen that appears whilst holding down that key.


Then shut down, insert the USB stick boot whilst holding OPTION again and re-install Lion.....Remember....You need an internet connection to do this.
 
Be aware that doing this might remove your restore partition. That happened to me when I had to reformat my drive (because a Boot Camp installation was screwed up). Internet Restore still works, but having a restore partition makes things a little easier. There is a way to put the restore partition back, but I don't recall how to do that.
 
Scuba629 said:
I did some searching and it looks like to reinstall Lion on my MacBook I press cmd + r while its booting up.

If this is correct how to I wipe the drive? Is there a utility that fully formats the drive? Or does it only do a quick format?

I'm kinda crazy when it comes to left over files and or old data do a full format is preferred.
Click to expand...

I just did this last night to my MBA2010. You don't even need the USB stick if you are not in a hurry. Lion will be brought down from the Internet as well.
 
KPOM said:
Be aware that doing this might remove your restore partition. That happened to me when I had to reformat my drive (because a Boot Camp installation was screwed up). Internet Restore still works, but having a restore partition makes things a little easier. There is a way to put the restore partition back, but I don't recall how to do that.
Click to expand...

What's the restore partition? Is that the cmd+r at reboot?
 
When you reboot while holding down Command-R, you will get several options. One is Disk Utility. If you click on that, you will see the standard Disk Utility. It will show (at least it did on mine) your hard drive and the recovery partition. Only erase the HD partition not the recovery partition.

I have done this several times. On a 128 gig SSD, on a MBA2010, it takes about 2 - 3 hours, start to finish, with downloading everything from the Internet.
 
kodeman53 said:
I have done this several times. On a 128 gig SSD, on a MBA2010, it takes about 2 - 3 hours, start to finish, with downloading everything from the Internet.
Click to expand...

Can I ask why?

It worries me that people seem to have a need to completely reinstall the OS. That was a pain on Windows XP but it was easy to see why people did it. OS X doesn't have the same "registry bogging down" issues. I trust the reason for your reinstall(s) wasn't anything like that?
 
So if I remove the recovery partition I will have to download everything from the internet each time I want to reinstall?

Will Mountain Lion be the same way?
 
xkmxkmxlmx said:
It is called "erase".

In disc utility you get the option to do a quick erase, a 3 pass erase and a 7 pass erase.
Click to expand...

I found the erase button but can't find the 3 or 7 pass option. Is there a sub menu? should it ask me after I click erase? Can I only do a 3 pass on the full drive?
 
Scuba629 said:
So if I remove the recovery partition I will have to download everything from the internet each time I want to reinstall?
Click to expand...

IIRC the recovery partition does not contain the installer either. It can boot your Mac and gets the stuff off Apple's servers.

----------

Is there any way to restore the restore partition? My understanding is you can only create the USB restore disk if your recovery partition is still working.

And what can you do if you go out and buy an entirely new HDD? And way to set up a brand new recovery partition?
 
Doesn't sound like the recovery partition is needed? Is there anything an average user would need it for?
 
Oh so I couldn't just reboot and use cmd+r again? Would the apple store be able I help?
 
notjustjay said:
Can I ask why?

It worries me that people seem to have a need to completely reinstall the OS. That was a pain on Windows XP but it was easy to see why people did it. OS X doesn't have the same "registry bogging down" issues. I trust the reason for your reinstall(s) wasn't anything like that?
Click to expand...

In my case, I needed to reinstall OS X because I botched the re-installation of my Boot Camp partition. :eek: While Boot Camp itself works fine, don't try to use the Windows Setup repair tools to do a clean reinstall of Windows. It will overwrite the GUID table in the boot partition, which is what tells the Mac which partition to boot into first.

As for OS X, I have never had to reinstall it because it slowed down. However, before I sell an old Mac, I will usually "restore" it by reformatting it and reinstalling OS X.

----------
Scuba629 said:
Doesn't sound like the recovery partition is needed? Is there anything an average user would need it for?
Click to expand...

It makes re-installation a bit quicker since it doesn't have to download the entire OS (though it still needs Internet access to download some components).
 
Also, you don't have to worry about the 3 or 7 pass. Even on a normal hard drive those options are excessive for over 99% of the population. The only reason a person would do that is to make sure any slight variation in the magnetic charge of each bit wouldn't be detectable. SSD doesn't rely on magnetic charge for storage, so once you wipe it is wiped. There is no CSI type scenario where you could still read the data of a properly erased SSD.
 
falterego said:
Also, you don't have to worry about the 3 or 7 pass. Even on a normal hard drive those options are excessive for over 99% of the population. The only reason a person would do that is to make sure any slight variation in the magnetic charge of each bit wouldn't be detectable. SSD doesn't rely on magnetic charge for storage, so once you wipe it is wiped. There is no CSI type scenario where you could still read the data of a properly erased SSD.
Click to expand...

Ok I won't bother.

Thanks for all the info everyone!
 
Scuba629 said:
Doesn't sound like the recovery partition is needed? Is there anything an average user would need it for?
Click to expand...

If you have a 2010 or newer Macbook you have a recovery system built into the system hardware (firmware/EFI) and it can perform the same function as the recovery system on the disk drive partition. The only thing you really require the drive partition version for is if you are going to enable Filevault2 as that boots from the drive recovery partition and then into the Filevault2 encrypted image.

KPOM said:
It makes re-installation a bit quicker since it doesn't have to download the entire OS (though it still needs Internet access to download some components).
Click to expand...

It is the same. They both just access Apple's servers to redownload everything.

IMO Apple has caused a lot of confusion having Apple Recovery in firmware and duplicating the same function on a drive partition and calling it the same thing.
 
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