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My MacBook Pro fell and is kinda cracked so since I have warranty from BestBuy, I want to do a complete wipe of the HDD and essentially restore it like it was brand new before I return it. (They’ll probably do it too, but I want to do it myself just to be sure.)

I’ve backed up all my data and all I need to do is wipe it.

What is the best way to go about this? I want to erase but obviously leave it in a working manner with OS on it etc.

I thought I found the answer here, but that’s for an older OS and the MBA machine.

I’m running the latest update of Mountain Lion.

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Do you have a time machine? – Josiah Oct 14 '12 at 22:39
Or any drive large enough to back up your data? – Josiah Oct 14 '12 at 22:39
Oh, wait. You said you backed up your data. In that case, you might want to re-back it up with time machine. Then just stick it into the new Mac and boot from that drive. (You can ask anyone at Bestbuy/Apple Store to show you how to do this). – Josiah Oct 14 '12 at 22:41

1 Answer

up vote 2 down vote accepted

What you should do is similar in concept to the answer that you've quoted. The main difference is that your MBP will have the Restore partition on its drive instead of the USB solution for the MBA.

Follow the instructions on Apple's recovery partition page:

Just hold down Command-R during startup and OS X Recovery springs into action. It lets you choose from common utilities: You can run Disk Utility to check or repair your hard drive, erase your hard drive and reinstall a fresh copy of OS X, or restore your Mac from a Time Machine backup.

Since you've already backed up your data, pick the erase and reinstall option, and you'll have a clean copy of OS X installed on the MBP before you bring the machine back for servicing/replacement.

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hello jw8. Thanks for the response, so will this option leave me with a virgin machine? will it remove EVERY APP, EVERY document etc and just leave the OS running just like i got it when it was new? Thanks in advanced. – somdow Oct 15 '12 at 2:13
Yes, if you choose that option, EVERYTHING will be wiped, leaving a virgin bare-bones OS X install. So make sure that anything you want saved is backed up, but it sounds like you've already done that. – JW8 Oct 15 '12 at 3:59
ok thanks, thats exactly what i wanted. Will do thanks again. – somdow Oct 15 '12 at 11:20

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