Restoring without a disc

44thservice

im looking to sell my mac and want to completely clear the hard drive and restore it completely, is this possible with out the disc? i dont have the osx disc so if i bought one or got the disc off a friend who had a mac too, would that work ?

thanks

micheal

ZENER

If only we were mind readers . . . If you want a proper qualified answer you need to provide some basic information at least !

What version of the OS is currently installed ?
Is that the same version you wish to install ?
What model/spec of Mac ?

With that info you'll get better advice.

Ken

44thservice

os 10.6.8

macbook pro

2.53 GHz intel core 15

memory 4 gb 1067 MHz DDR3

Nemeses

44thservice wrote: »

os 10.6.8

macbook pro

2.53 GHz intel core 15

memory 4 gb 1067 MHz DDR3

Two methods.

1. You will need the disc if you want to do a complete clean install.


2. Create a new admin account and then use this account to delete your old account. By doing this you will remove Absolutely everything from your user account such as docs, music etc, however any applications you installed will still remain on the system.

ZENER

That method will work but the users files are still there and recoverable by anyone who knows what they're doing.

What about doing what Nemeses suggests.
Then clone (CarbonCopyCloner)the drive to another drive (external maybe ?)
Remove the internal drive and connect it to a pc if you can and run DBAN on it to completely wipe it.
Once done clone the contents of the external drive back to the now clean drive.

Ken

Nemeses

ZENER wrote: »

That method will work but the users files are still there and recoverable by anyone who knows what they're doing.

You can remove the home folder securely when you delete an account... Though I can't remember if that can be done in 10.6.. I think it can.

nialler

Or alternatively you can download the 10.8 upgrade (less expensive than a disk), let it create the recovery partition on your HD, go to recover and wipe your HD and fresh install 10.8.

€12.99 on the apple store.

I presume you have everything transferred from the laptop.

Nialler

44thservice

so on my laptop, i can make another account and from that account i could now delete the existing account that i used and everything from that will be gone??
do you how to do this?


also could someone help is changing the account password that you need to enter for any confirming details ?like the little menu that comes up when changing thing or confirming things. the password for the entire computer ?? thank you if you can help me

ZENER

Follow the guide here to create a new user account. Be sure to set it as an Admin account as in Step 3 of the guide.

Log in to this new account and delete the old account by going back to System Preferences > Users etc. As long as the new account in an Admin account then you have permission to change settings and the new password should work when requested.

Ken

44thservice

guys where do i see if my mac has a SSD