Reformat Mac from Snow Leopard Upgrade Disk

[philb86]

Simple as.. is this possible?

I have been given an iMac by my father in law who has lost the original set of recovery disks that came with the system.

When I took the iMac, I wanted to format with the new Snow Leopard upgrade, but could not work out how to do this (being new to Macs!).

Does anyone know if it is possible to re-format an iMacs hard disk without the original recovery disks, but with the Snow Leopard upgrade disk instead?

Thanks in aniticpation!

 

[Nermal]

Yes, with a "but". The retail SL DVD will only install the base OS, and not iPhoto etc. If you need any of those "bundled apps" then you'll need the grey install DVDs.

Edit: What OS did the system come with? If it included 10.6 in the first place, then the retail DVD might not have all the drivers that you need.

 

[Hellhammer]

Yes, with a "but". The retail SL DVD will only install the base OS, and not iPhoto etc. If you need any of those "bundled apps" then you'll need the grey install DVDs.

Or just restore them from a Time Machine backup

Edit: What OS did the system come with? If it included 10.6 in the first place, then the retail DVD might not have all the drivers that you need.

It's iMac so retail version should work just fine (late '09 iMacs came so closely after 10.6)

 

[wandal]

There are no "upgrades" for SnowLeopard out there. There is just the OS X 10.6 SnowLeopard install DVD.

First of all, ensure that the iMac has an Intel CPU (all iMacs since 2006 have Intel CPU) Apple menu > info on this Mac.

Put the DVD into your Mac. Restart holding the "C" key, to force boot from the DVD.

First thing, menu > Disk Utility and you initialize the internal HD. Option Guid Partition Table, best with just 1 partition.

Then you can install the new system.

Then you have to listen to "software update" and download everything will be needed.

 

[philb86]

It's a late 2006 Intel based system that I think came with OS X Tiger, which was then upgraded to Leopard, then by me to Snow Leopard - I'll try it later on with the Snow Leopard disk - new owner, fresh disk is all I wanted really!