Q: I have a 2009 Macbook running Lion 10.7. No OS disk. I want to erase the hard drive. I did the Control-R, but it goes to my home page. In disk utilities, I only have one disc, no partiotion. How can I format my hard drive? Thanks.

Buy a retail Mac OS X 10.6 DVD or replacement original disk, click here, and follow the instructions. When you reach step 5, insert that disk, restart with the C or Option key held down, use the Disk Utility to erase the internal drive, and install a fresh OS.

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Linc Davis Feb. 2016 post on restoring computer to new condition - https://discussions.apple.com/message/29726244#29726244 - in particular read about using a OSX 10.7+ on an older machine

Did you really use Control R. The command is Command R. In the operating system you will not see the recovery partition from disk utilities,