[X Newbies] Uninstalling OS X How to do it completely?

[Alex]

On Thursday, Apr 22, 2004, at 21:05 Canada/Eastern, John Erdman wrote:

> [...] installing OS 10.1.2 onto a "virgin" partition[...]   How can I 
> thoroughly remove the OS from that partiton? [...] Im a little fearful 
> of tossing something important.[...]

I'm not quite sure I follow you entirely. Let me see: (1) you had an 
"virgin" partition, (2) you installed Mac OS X on it, (3) now you want 
to remove Mac OS X from it.

If that is correct, then why be "a little fearful of tossing something 
important"? Either (a) the partition was "virgin" -- so there's nothing 
important to lose, or (b) you had important files on it prior to 
installing OS X, in which case it wasn't "virgin".

On assumption (a), it's simple. The easiest way is with Disk Utility > 
Erase. Disk Utility will present you with a list of disks and volumes 
(i.e., partitions). Make sure you select the _volume_, not the _disk_. 
At any rate, DU will warn you first -- be sure to read the warning 
carefully, 'cause there ain't no way back. There are other ways, but 
that's the simplest. (Note that a partition is not really the same 
thing as a volume, although colloquially they're interchangeable, but 
it will do for now.)

On assumption (b), it's probably easiest to copy your important files 
to another volume, then follow the procedure outlined above. If you 
don't know which those files are, then you're in trouble. Is that your 
situation?

f