Partition Management, Reformatting, etc. - I'm STUCK!

[JonnyC]

Hey guys, frustrated newbie here in need of a way to whipe a drive clean and start afresh. Went all out on new hardware and my system is powered down with nothing to do but look pretty. Leopard instal went fine however multibeast corrupted system files rendering it un-bootable. Trying to re-install leopard and start back to square one but the instal hangs, likely on account of the pre-existing system files on the drive. I need to whipe it fresh but being an MS guy that used to rely on MS-DOS tools back in the day, I'm not sure how to do that on this Mac formated SSD drive. I'm in over my head! I can't have these $2800 worth of hardware lost on such a seemingly small hurtle. Any suggestions are VERY MUCH welcome!

 

[JonnyC]

solved my own problem

there weren't really options to boot into a dos like environment that would recognize a guid partition table. ('nix environment required) as research revealed. well, there may have been a way, i'm sure, for those linux/unix pros. (util called parted does it)

i just installed leopard on another drive, then plugged the SSD drive back in, booted up leopard, and whiped the partition using disk utilities. A 30 min proces to instal an entire operating system just to clean a drive, but it worked. PITA but it's better than nothing...

 

[nomad9]

For future reference - the install process will address this. iBoot and swap out the disk for the Leopard install disk at the Chimera window. Click through the language selection. Once you get to the install screen, select Tools from the top drop down menu, Disk Utilities, and reformat the drive from Disk Utilities.

A little quicker than installing on a different drive.

Hope that helps,