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Wiping HD except osx

Hey all. Long story short I'm trying to wipe out pretty much all the junk on my sister's old lapetop that's the same as mine Powerbook g4 15 in. I had a HD failure and want to use her laptop temporarily to save all my photos online.( I have many time machine backups that I can restore from, just not enough free space) The HD is practically full but there really isnt much on it ( 150 pictures, maybe 150 songs, ect.) and of course osx 10.5.8. Is there a way to wipe everything off the internal HD except the os? Her optical drive is broken, and I have an external one. I tried booting from the disk but it just wouldn't let me. I'm afraid if I wipe out EVERYTHINg I wont be able to reload leopard. Thanks!

PowerBook, Mac OS X (10.5.8), 1.5 GHz PowerPC G4

Posted on Jan 14, 2014 5:32 AM

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2 replies

Jan 14, 2014 4:28 PM in response to powerbookluvr2010

Do you have any of the original or retail OS X 10.5.x installation disks? If not why not manually discard to trash all the unwanted stuff.


You could get an external hard drive (beg, borrow, or buy) with firewire connection and make a bootable clone from which you can run

Disk Utility to wipe the drive.


It will probably be less expensive and a lot less trouble to get a retail 10.5.x install disk off eBay and don't buy an gray colored Mac OS X install disks.

Jan 15, 2014 7:26 AM in response to dalstott

I have the original disk I used to put the os on the computer. It will not let me boot it. It will show up on the desktop, but when I chose the option to install it restarts and does nothing. I don't get the option to erase and install a clean version, or recovery patition at start up.. GRR.... So I could use ccc, make a bootable copy and wipe the disk once i'm running off external? Just cant wipe it while using it if I can't boot from disk, right? Thanks for yoyr response!

Wiping HD except osx

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