I’m selling my machine and I want to get it to factory settings. The problem is I don’t have the os cd that came with it…
What’s the best I can do ? What will leave nothing but the os?
It’s running SN os
I need this asap thanks ahead

Well… you could wipe the entire hard drive as long as you have another computer and a FireWire cable, but the buyer would be left with a computer with a blank drive.

I can’t think of any other way of making sure that all of your data gets erased.

A Snow Leopard DVD only costs $29. You could just buy a copy and use that.

The only really secure way would be to Nuke&Pave;. Format the drive and reinstall SL. I did a 7 pass overwrite on my PB before reinstalling 10.5 and selling it and feel fairly confident that all the old data was gone.

I have worked for several places that mandated physically destroying the drive (use a drill press and a vice to poke a nice big hole through the platters) before selling any computer. IMO that’s a bit excessive for private use.

Swap out the hard drive. You can use your good one as a backup drive for the future.

If you’ve been storing all user data in the proper places (i.e., inside user’s home folders), you can delete each of the users and their home directories. If you’re concerned about making sure all the data is gone, you can do a secure empty of the trash after you’ve deleted the users.

This will leave a system with all of the applications installed, but there shouldn’t be any user data left.

nevermind

Eric has it about right. If you want to keep everything intact, and just remove your data, do the following.

• First create a new admin account.
• Login to this account and delete all the other accounts.
• Delete anything else that you don’t want on the system from inside the Apps folder, or /Users/Shared.
• Delete everything from the root level of the hard drive leaving the default Applications, Library, System & Users folders. You can use a utility (like TinkerTool) to reveal hidden items if you’re really paranoid, but be careful. Some of the hidden items at the root level are part of the system.
• Launch Disk Utility, select your boot partition, and use the erase free space option. This will take a good deal of time for large drives, so be patient. The default single-pass option is fine.

At this point, your drive is clean of any personal data. If you’d like to have it boot as if it’s a new system with the Setup Assistant, there are a few extra steps. There’s a good article covering Leopard (w/ a link to the Tiger hint) over at OS X Hints.

Restart into single user mode using command S.

mount /      (Note a space between mount and the /)

rm -rf /var/db/dhcpclient

rm -rf /var/db/netinfo

rm -rf /var/db/samba

rm -rf /var/db/NetworkInterfaces.xml

rm -rf /var/db/.AppleSetupDone

rm -rf /Users/user

reboot

chrisr - 30 December 2009 12:29 PM

Eric has it about right. If you want to keep everything intact, and just remove your data, do the following.<snip>

Sounds like it should work, but personally I’m not 100% confident that every program puts stuff where it’s supposed to. Flash for example will leave crumbs lying around in odd corners. For $29 I’d still recommend the Nuke&Pave; rout.

geoduck - 30 December 2009 01:14 PM

chrisr - 30 December 2009 12:29 PM

Eric has it about right. If you want to keep everything intact, and just remove your data, do the following.<snip>

Sounds like it should work, but personally I’m not 100% confident that every program puts stuff where it’s supposed to. Flash for example will leave crumbs lying around in odd corners. For $29 I’d still recommend the Nuke&Pave; rout.

I totally agree. However the topic is “Cleanst [sic] you can get without the cd?”.

Cleanst [sic] you can get without the cd?”.

Then run the unix script by restarting in single user mode and input the following.

mount /      (Note a space between mount and the /)

rm -rf /var/db/dhcpclient

rm -rf /var/db/netinfo

rm -rf /var/db/samba

rm -rf /var/db/NetworkInterfaces.xml

rm -rf /var/db/.AppleSetupDone

rm -rf /Users/user

reboot

Do it for each user if you have multiple. There will be no user data left and the Mac will start the setup process
like it was a brand new setup. This requires “no CD”.