Preparation

• 1). Back up anything you might want later. When you format a computer hard drive, you will lose everything that is on the drive.
  
  
• 2). Take a second to think about everything you need on your computer. You will want all your documents and maybe your bookmarks from your Web browser.
  
  
• 3). Make sure you have the installation disks for all of your programs and the drivers for any third-party hardware you use if you are going to reformat your system drive and reinstall the operating system.
  
  

Formatting with Drive Setup

• 1). Use the Drive Setup application with Mac OS 9 whether you're setting up a secondary drive or reformatting your system drive. The main difference is that if you are going to reformat your system drive, you must boot off a system CD because you will have to reinstall the Mac OS 9 (or whatever operating system you are going to use). If you are not formatting your system drive, skip the next step.
  
  
• 2). Insert the system CD into your CD drive and restart your computer to boot off of it. From the second the screen goes blank and starts to boot, you must hold the 'c' key down until you see the little happy Mac picture come up. On some older (pre-G3) Macs, you hold down the open-apple (aka Command) key down instead of 'c'.
  
  
• 3). Insert your Mac OS 9 System CD if you haven't already because you booted off of it. Open the CD and open the "Drive Setup" program, which is in the "Utilities" folder (also usually in a "Utilities" folder on your main hard drive).
  
  
• 4). Click on the drive you wish to format and press "Initialize..." after the Drive Setup window opens showing you a list of the drives installed on your computer.
  
  
• 5). Click Custom Setup at the bottom of the "Initializing will destroy all data on the following volumes:" window that pops up.
  
  
• 6). Select "1 Partition" from the "Partitioning Scheme:" drop down menu unless you are formatting the drive for some sort of special setup (such as a future installation of OSX). Select "Mac OS Extended" from the "Type:" menu. In the "Size:" field, enter the number from "Total Capacity:" (the computer may change the number to make it slightly smaller to properly fit). Now press "OK."
  
  
• 7). Click "Initialize" when you are back at the "Initialize" window. The computer will format the drive and return to the "Drive Setup" window which should say "Formatting..." for a while and once finished display the message "Initialization was successful."
  
  
• 8). Reinstall your operating system, now that your drive is fully formatted, if you booted off your system disk and reformatted your system drive.