Wipe 2007 imac for resale w/o working optical drive?

[sorbonny]

I've found instructions re wiping an imac for resale, but all I've seen call for the startup discs. I think I've got the disc somewhere, but the optical drive hasn't worked for years.

Can anyone tell me or point me toward a way of wiping the imac clean without the disc? Thanks

 

[firedept]

Buy a cheap external drive. Can be had on Amazon or Best Buy. Then you can keep it or send it with when you sell.

 

[Nin3teen]

I'm not sure if Lion will run on an iMac that age, so let's assume not.
Download Snow Leopard from somewhere, and the below instructions will show you how to burn it to a USB flash drive from which you can boot from and perform your wipe.

http://www.maciverse.com/install-os-x-snow-leopard-from-usb-flash-drive.html

 

[Ralphalph]

What version of OSX do you have on there? 10.7/8 will have a recovery partition that you can boot to instead. See:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4718?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US

I think that may work for you, or borrowing or getting a cheap USB optical drive as the other poster will have to do.

 

[sorbonny]

Thanks for the help guys

 

[sorbonny]

Just a thought - I'm selling this in-family so I'm not especially worried - is there some measure short of a total wipe that might be OK, or is this the way to go no matter who you're passing the computer on to?

 

[Consultant]

If you got another Mac with optical drive, you can use target disk mode to use it as external dvd drive.

 

[johncon]

I'm not sure if Lion will run on an iMac that age, so let's assume not.
Download Snow Leopard from somewhere, and the below instructions will show you how to burn it to a USB flash drive from which you can boot from and perform your wipe.

http://www.maciverse.com/install-os-x-snow-leopard-from-usb-flash-drive.html

It's just Mountain Lion and beyond that that model will not run. I'm running Lion just fine on my Late 2006 iMac.

 

[Nin3teen]

It's just Mountain Lion and beyond that that model will not run. I'm running Lion just fine on my Late 2006 iMac.

Then it's easy to do. I've used this app many times before for Lion and Mountain Lion. Easily walks you through how to make a USB boot disk.
All you need is to download the app, and have a blank, 8GB thumb drive handy.

http://liondiskmaker.com