Getting ready to upgrade to OSX...

H

highfly900

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I work for the govt doing video production. We have a Final Cut Pro system on a 867 G4 with OS 9.2.2 and FCP 2. This computer has been abused with excessive software installed on it, a lot of it pirated from student work study users and someone even tried to hook up a PC SCSI array with a PC card and that just brought more problems obviously. We have decided to upgrade to OSX and FCP 4. Before we do this I would like a fresh start on the G4 and wipe the hard drive blank and reinstall only the OS and FCP. Nothing needs to be saved on the hard drive.
Would someone be willing to walk me through or point me to where I can find out how to blank the boot hard drive and reinstall the OS? I am desperate to figure this out soon and need any help I can get. I have all the install CDs I need, I am just coming from a PC background and am a little lost. Any help is greatly appreciated! Thank you!
 
Just insert the OS X install CD, and open it...there should be an icon that says "install OS X", or something similar. Your computer will restart, and you'll be presented with options...one of which is to erase your disk, and install OS X. The actual install can take anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour, but actual setup shouldn't take more than 5 or 6 minutes. It's quite easy, with even a basic understanding of any OS, you should be able to handle it. Conngrats on the switch:D
 
You can do this from the OS X install CD. Just make sure you select HSF Extended format. I suggest you partition your drive. About 8 gig minimum for the OS X system partition, the other can be used to save work to. I suggest this because if the system ever bombs, you still have the work on the other partition and you can easily reinstall the system. Not much to walk through, well at least it seems that simple.
 
I just want to point out that the OSX installer doesn't really ask you if you want to wipe out your hard drive.

What you should do is, at the first screen of the install before clicking "Continue" go into the Installer menu bar, look for the Disk Utility menu item and select it. It'll launch Disk Utility where you have the option to Erase that partition, or delete it and create a new one yourself. It's very easy and straight forward, the partitioning tool will even help you layout the disk.

In the disk eraser, there's an option to fill the partition with zero's. This guarentees that no data will ever be retreivable from the disk again. Creating a new partition simply modifies the structure of the disk but does not change its contents, so data can still be retreived with low level disk utitlities. By zeroing it out, it's clean.
 
Yes... use Disk Utility to wipe clean your hard drive, then run the OS X installer. After you finish installing OS X, you should go online and download the latest version of 10.2 (I presume you're using 10.2), which I believe is 10.2.6, then update your system. Finally, insert your FCP4 disk and run its installer.
 
If you will install OS X it would better be OS X 10.2 aka Jaguar! Oh, and before installing OS X you should check if your firmware is up to date! Also, just in case reset your Mac's PRAM and yes oh yes, format your hard drive in HFS+ before installing the OS X...

Have you checked if your other (if any) devices are compatible with the version of OS X you are going to install? It should be better if you check first, solve problems (if any) then install OS X! And not install then check and fix problems! :D ;)

Let us know what gives! Oh, and welcome here too! :)
 
And be sure to update 10.2 to 10.2.6! There were some problematic bugs in 10.2.0.

To update, Apple Menu (top left of screen) --> System Preferences --> Software Update

You may need to run it multiple times, as new options pop up after you install some updates.

Doug
 
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