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Level 1

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10.8 Clean install question.

i have lion installed on my macbook and i am about to install mountain lion. im going to do a clean install, i have made a bootable usb and am ready to go. my question is this. if i use disk utility (ran from the USB drive) erase the HD will it remove all the partitions that lion made (the main system partitions and the recovery partition). i want all the data and partitions gone and for the HD to be a "true" blank slate before i install mountain lion (im ocd that way lol)

any info would help, thanks

Mac OS X (10.7.5)

Posted on Nov 19, 2012 4:33 PM

Best reply

Munas

Level 4

1,270 points

Posted on Nov 19, 2012 4:49 PM

Disk Utility will not display “Recovery HD” on it’s own because it’s a hidden partition, meaning you can’t just go into the app and delete it. What you can do though is format the entire drive though. This is sort of the nuclear approach but it works to delete the recovery partition too.

Boot the Mac from a recovery DVD, USB key, or an attached drive

Launch Disk Utility

Right-click on the Disk (not the partitions) and select “Erase”

Select the default Mac OS Extended (Journaled) as the file system, and give the drive a name

Click on “Erase” to completely format the drive – you will lose all data on the drive and all partitions.This formats the drive giving you a clean slate to start from.

to make sure you may use terminal command before and after format

diskutil list

this will display all the partitions on your disk

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16 replies

Munas

Level 4

1,270 points

Nov 19, 2012 6:19 PM in response to 12oz Mouse

are these after the ML installation?

10.8 Clean install question.