ReFormat Mac HD

mzambizimzambizi
Posted:
in Genius Bar edited January 2014
I am new to the Mac platform and am used to reformatting PC's. It seems easy to reformat the mac but i have just one question. I have a MacBook Pro w/ OSX 10.4.11. When in the Disk Utility there is the option to format the 'Volume' called "Macintosh HD" or the option to format the physical Hard Drive, in my case a Fujitsu. If i format the physical drive Toshiba, it seems it will erase the Volume Macintosh HD. If this is the case, after formatting do i have to go into Partition to create a new Volume called Macintosh HD or whatever i decide to call it?? or should i just format the Volume Macintosh HD to begin with and not worry about formatting the physical drive. I would appreciate advice on formatting both and what the difference may be.I tried doing on search on this question, but nobody differentiates b/w formatting either. -thanks

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 1
    kmac1036kmac1036 Posts: 281member
    You will only be able to erase from the Install DVD... FYI



    Macintosh HD: That will erase the partition. Doing the ROOT device will wipe ALL partitions (there are a couple hidden ones) & rebuild the Partition map.



    If you are doing this to install Windows, Boot Camp (/Applications/Utilities) will partition this for you WITHOUT reformatting the whole drive. So, far, I have not had any issues with this, it works well!



    You can also do it manually in the partitions tab & will still retain the data. it can do live partitioning without data loss, tho they do prompt you to backup first, just in case.
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