Your data will be gone after this and not recoverable what so ever, don't come crying later that you missed something. If a Mac came pre-installed or from the factory with 10.6.3 or later, you cannot use the 10.6.3 retail disks (no iLife) from Apple online, you have to call Apple for your 10.6.3+ machine specific install disks (free iLife included) You can't use another model of Mac's 10.6 machine specific disks with another Mac, there isn't hardware drivers on those disks that will work on other Mac's. There are basically two types of 10.6 install disks, the gray or black machine specfic ones that came with a new Mac (free iLife) or the 10.6.3 retail disks (no free iLife). Use the free MacTracker to find your model of Mac, you can gleam the model from your Apple Menu > About this Mac > More information and look for something like 'MacBook Pro 3,1' and punch that into MacTracker. Use the correct 10.6 disk to install Snow Leopard If your here because you want to secure erase data better than writing Zero's acorss the selected hard drive or partition (good enough for most folks), this tip doesn't cover that, see this one then come back here afterwards. If your here because you have a problem and you think erasing and reinstalling is going to solve it, it most certainly will, but you might not need to go this far and you might want to recover data off the non-booting drive first.Ĭreate a data recovery, undelete boot drive

If your here because you upgraded to 10.7 Lion and want to go back to 10.6 Snow Leopard you need to see this thread.Ī little more preparation is in order to make sure your files work in Snow Leopard. You need to erase and install 10.6 Snow Leopard, I will show you how to do this.

Mac os x version 10.6 wipe clean