Mac frustration

[audi111688]

how would one go about cleaning off the hard drive of an iMac?

 

[n0cmonkey]

Totally, or just pruning?

 

[InlineFive]

Zero fill and format with the filesystem of your choice.

 

[audi111688]

uhh...can you put this in terms for someone who only uses a mac for internet when he comes to his friends house? and, totally clean it off...

 

[InlineFive]

Okay, what are you planning on doing with this hard drive. Do you want to leave the OS or just make the entire hard drive blank?

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: audi111688
uhh...can you put this in terms for someone who only uses a mac for internet when he comes to his friends house? and, totally clean it off...

I'm going from memory, so it may be a bit off.
In the utilities folder in the applications folder there should be an application called something like "Disk Utility." It'll have a picture of a hard drive and a stethescope, IIRC.

Double click it. Once inside it will have a tree-like menu on the left, and some other gibberish on the right. Select the hard drive you want to format (or initialize in Mac terms I think) on the left. Go back to the right and select initialize, format, or something along those lines. If you're using OS X 10.4, choose the HFS+ with journalling option and format the sucker.

If you're using something before that I don't know how good the HFS+ with journalling is. If you're planning on using it for something else (like if it's removable media), other options may be better.

That'll format it and it'll be ready to put files on. If it's the boot drive you will then lose your OS. It may not allow this, in which case you'll have to do the same procedure, but from a booted Mac OS X install cd.

 

[audi111688]

i want to keep the OS. the computer is a hand-me-down from a potographer, so it has lots of stuff on it i will never touch and is definately slowing it down a lot.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: audi111688
i want to keep the OS. the computer is a hand-me-down from a potographer, so it has lots of stuff on it i will never touch and is definately slowing it down a lot.

Then just drag anything you don't want into the trash.

 

[Skitzer]

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