How do I safely eradicate OS 9 from my system?

Personnelly I would keep System 9 on for the next week or so. That way you can continue to do your normal computing in System X and if you happen to start up something requires Classic then you'll know about it BEFORE purging System 9.

As for removing System 9 I would highly recommend backup your files and then just doing a clean install of just OS X. It is a little more effort than just dragging the Classic files to the trash but it'll give you a nice, clean OS X only enviroment.

The only system performance change you should see is more available hard drive space. You should be able to live with that, though

[quote]Originally posted by tetzel1517:
<strong>1. Is there something I'm forgetting here? Some compelling reason to keep it around that I haven't thought of?

2. How do I go about doing this?

3. Will this affect overall system performance in any way?
</strong><hr></blockquote>

Starting from the bottom...

3. No; system performance will neither improve nor degenerate in any way -- unless of course, you're running extremely low on harddrive space currently, in which case you might see a marginal improvement. Others may disagree with this statement, but that's been my experience.

2. Remove the System Folder from your harddrive. Done. In short, Classic will not run without that folder.

1. Whether you're forgetting something or not is really not something that I can answer. Only you know whether or not you really need access to legacy software. If you're sure that you don't need it anymore, then go forth and delete.

If there's enough doubt in your mind to make you hesitate, then consider testing yourself instead... by "disabling" the System Folder for awhile. One simple way of doing this is by removing the Finder from the System Folder. You don't actually have to delete anything this way, and if you find out that you did forget something after all, you can just put the Finder back and everything is hunkey-dorey. The way I see it: if you discover down the road that you had forgotten all about that "disabled" System Folder and it's just taking up harddrive space, then you have obviously passed the test... delete it. How much time you wait is really just a matter of your own comfort level.

Also keep in mind that you can always reinstall it again later if you need to.