Reformat a laptop without original OS disk but new OS disk

[grazii]

Hi,

I have a mac book pro, 120 GB, 60 GB is a PC, 60 GB is the mac.

I do not have the original CD, but I've purchased the snow leopard one.

The problem is that if I put the snow leopard disk it just upgrades my current OS. I want to:

- reformat my HD completely as I'm selling the laptop and install snow leopard

- leave a partition of 40 GB for the PC (install this later)

I've seen posts that speak about disk utilities, however, in my case, the erase options are greyed out, so this is not an option. Also the posts that I've seen seem to require the original CD - which as mentioned, I don't have, I just have the new snow leopard one - which should be ok for the job?

Thank you so much!

 

[maflynn]

The Snow Leopard disk (provided you bought the retail version) is bootable and you can reformat your drive by inserting the disc into the drive and hold the C key down during the reboot.

 

[grazii]

thanks, what about the partition?

Thank you! i think the C key is the tip I was missing

Can I install the mac and do the partition / PC thing later on? Do I need any extra software to do this?

I didn't install the original thing myself so I'm a bit lost

thanks, g.

 

[DivineEvil]

No matter which SL disk you have (Retail or Upgrade (the 9.95$ one)) they can both boot, format, install, whatever OSX...

You can easily install Windows without using Bootcamp Utility (BCU) in Mac OS X. The BCU only works if your HDD is 1 partition. But what if you want more than 1? Then use Disk Utility to split the disk with as many partitions as you want. Install Mac OSX. Install rEFIt in Mac OSX. Then install Windows on the second partition (you may need to format that partition in NTFS in the install )...

I personally have 3 partitions Mac,Windows and a Data/Storage one...