Installing OSX Mavericks on a Mac Pro with completely blank fresh out of the box HDs?

[Mac Pro 2009]

Is that possible? Using a USB stick? I have four brand new WD drives for my mac pro and a bootable USB with Mavericks, will I be able to use the option key to boot from the USB even though the hard drives are completely empty and probably in Windows format?

Then should I format the drives one by one or can I have all four blank drives in when I first boot? And finally, is it a good idea to wipe the drives with one pass of zeros when formatting it to Mac OS Journaled? I heard it is good practice doing so for the first time in order to eliminate bad sectors and make the disk fail sooner than later if it was manufactured defectively or something?

 

[ssls6]

Is that possible? Using a USB stick? I have four brand new WD drives for my mac pro and a bootable USB with Mavericks, will I be able to use the option key to boot from the USB even though the hard drives are completely empty and probably in Windows format?

Then should I format the drives one by one or can I have all four blank drives in when I first boot? And finally, is it a good idea to wipe the drives with one pass of zeros when formatting it to Mac OS Journaled? I heard it is good practice doing so for the first time in order to eliminate bad sectors and make the disk fail sooner than later if it was manufactured defectively or something?

should work fine, hold the alt key and fire up DU.

 

[Weaselboy]

Is that possible? Using a USB stick? I have four brand new WD drives for my mac pro and a bootable USB with Mavericks, will I be able to use the option key to boot from the USB even though the hard drives are completely empty and probably in Windows format?

Yep... that will work fine. Option key boot to the USB key then use Disk Util to erase the target drive in Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Quit Disk Util then click install OS and off you go.

Then should I format the drives one by one or can I have all four blank drives in when I first boot? And finally, is it a good idea to wipe the drives with one pass of zeros when formatting it to Mac OS Journaled? I heard it is good practice doing so for the first time in order to eliminate bad sectors and make the disk fail sooner than later if it was manufactured defectively or something?

They can all be blank and you will erase/format the OS drive as I described above. Then once you get the OS installed you can erase the other three with Disk Util once logged in to the new OS install.

I have never heard this business about a secure erase out of the gate like you described. Maybe somebody else can weigh in on that one.

 

[cal6n]

*snip*

And finally, is it a good idea to wipe the drives with one pass of zeros when formatting it to Mac OS Journaled? I heard it is good practice doing so for the first time in order to eliminate bad sectors and make the disk fail sooner than later if it was manufactured defectively or something?

I've been doing this with new drives for many years now. It may just be luck but I have remarkably few disc failures. In fact, I can't remember the last one.

Don't try it with SSDs, though.