My iMac died, how can I wipe the HD?

[Hanna]

Mack, did you just reload the OS onto the firewire drive? I didn’t know that was possible, so I went with internal.

[mack]

This is what I did, IIRC (it’s been a while) -

You said you don’t have restore discs but I imagine regular OS install discs work the same way.

I put restore disc 1 in the slot.

I held down the option key while turning on the computer. This allowed me to select the DVD drive/restore disc to work off of.

I used This Guide from Western Digital (although I had a 1TB Mac-formatted iomega) to make sure the external drive was partitioned correctly.

The external hard drive must contain a Mac OS Extended (HFS+) partition with GUID for Intel-based computers or Apple Partition Map on PowerPC-based computers. For directions on how to partition and format an external hard drive, please follow the directions below:

Ensure that the external hard drive is connected to the computer and powered on. Open the main drive (the drive that contains the operating system) [this will be the DVD drive in your case - mack].

Open the Applications folder.

Open the Utilities folder.

Open the Disk Utility application.

The drives are displayed on the left side of the window. Click on the drive (the upper listing with the numerical capacity) that you wish to partition.

Once the drive is selected click on Partition tab.

Click on the Options button to select the partitioning scheme.

Click on GUID for Intel-based computers or Apple Partition Map for PowerPC-based ones and then click on the OK button.

You will see several options for setting up the drive. Once you have selected the number of partitions, the format type you want (Mac OS Extended), and a volume label, click the Apply button. Click the Partition button to confirm your selection and begin the partition operation.

Following the completion of this process, the drive will appear on the desktop. It is now ready for installing a bootable operating system on it.

Due to differences between WD’s version and what I was seeing I wasn’t able to follow the above note for note but I was able to get through the partitioning process.

Once that was done, I initiated the install process. Along the way I chose which drive to install the OS on and selected the external.

After installing I selected the external as my startup volume.

There’s probably something I didn’t do correctly because I have to click through a disk eject message whenever I boot up. Small price to pay, though.

I contemplated replacing the internal myself but chickened out and looked into making an external work instead. And by Jove, it did!

[Hanna]

Thanks! That would have been easier. Oh well. I got a good price (after rebate) on a 1TB drive and it will be an experience. A good one, I hope.

[Hanna]

It worked! It was a bit of a hassle, but my SO and I put in a new drive and got Snow Leopard loaded. $75 and a few hours is all it took.