# Can I erase the "500.11 GB APPLE HDD" entirely as a whole?



## Daniel_Mal (Dec 30, 2012)

Hi everyone, first time post.

I have been playing around with triple-boot on my macbook. I installed Ubuntu and Windows alongside Mac, but they didn't get along so I erased the partitions holding them. Unfortunately, now the 120 GB that I allocated to the two systems I cannot allocate back to my macbook partition for some reason (these 120 GB do not even appear as free space in disk utility, and I cannot select the 120 GB either).

So, I decided that I will restore my Mac to factory condition. I created a mountain lion startup USB flash drive (Sandisk Cruzer Blade, 16GB), and boot up from it. In Disk Utility, I have the option of erasing the 500.11 GB HDD as a whole, not just one of the partitions. This is what I want to do, because I'm afraid that If I wipe only my Macintosh HD partition, then I will reinstall OS X on that partition, and still not regain the 120GB that I'm trying to get back in the first place!

My question- can I safely click "erase" and reformat my entire HDD (Macinotsh HD + Recovery HD), so that I am left with a blank computer onto which I can do a fresh install of OS X using the above-mentioned flash drive?

My worries: by erasing the hard drive entirely, won't I also erase information for the mac such as ability to start up from a flash drive? Please reassure me on whether I can or cannot wipe my entire HDD!

Thank you all so much!

Daniel.


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## sinclair_tm (Mar 11, 2005)

The partition table is what is broken, and the only way to reset it as it were is to reformat the whole drive. The booting from USB isn't a function of the hard drive. The firmware handles that, so you can boot the Mac even if it doesn't have a hard drive.


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## sugartwinz (Jan 11, 2013)

You can boot to the USB recovery drive.
In disk utility you will see the main drive then the partitions on it. ie: mac HD.
select the main drive not the partition. over to the right you will have an extra tab. The partition tab. Select 'one partition' from the drop down, pick Mac OS extended (Journaled) and hit apply. That will wipe the entire drive and fix any partitioning issues. 
Your issue was probably caused by removing a bootcamp partition with disk utility. You need to remove it with the bootcamp setup assistant in order to reclaim the space.


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