Apple Mac OS X Server (Version 10.6 Snow Leopard) - Manual (Page 99)

Chapter 5 Installation and Deployment 99
Erasing a Disk or Partition
You have several options for erasing a disk, depending on your preferred tools and
your computing environment:
 Erasing a disk using Disk Utility: You can use the Installer to open Disk Utility and
then use it to erase the target volume or another volume. You can erase the target
and all other volumes using the Mac OS Extended format or Mac OS Extended
(Journaled) format. You can erase other volumes using those formats, as well as
Mac OS Extended format (Case-Sensitive) format, or Mac OS Extended (Journaled,
Case-Sensitive) format.
You can find instructions for partitioning the hard disk into multiple volumes,
creating a RAID set, and erasing the target disk or partition by viewing Disk Utility
Help. To view Disk Utility Help, open Disk Utility on another Mac computer with
Mac OS X v10.6 and choose Help > Disk Utility Help.
 Erasing a disk using the command line: You can use the command line to
erase disks using the tool diskutil. Erasing a disk using diskutil deletes all volume
partitions. The command to erase a complete disk is:
diskutil eraseDisk format name [OS9Drivers | APMFormat | MBRFormat |
GPTFormat] device
For example:
diskutil eraseDisk JournaledHFS+ MacProHD GPTFormat disk0
There is also an option to securely delete data by overwriting the disk with random
data multiple times. For more details, see diskutil’s man page.
To erase a single volume on a disk, a slightly different command is used:
diskutil eraseVolume format name device
For example:
diskutil eraseVolume JournaledHFS+ UntitledPartition /Volumes/
OriginalPartition
For complete command syntax for diskutil , consult the tool’s man page.
Installing Server Software Interactively
You can use the installation disc to install server software interactively on a local server,
on a remote server, or on a computer with Mac OS X installed.