Depends on the Mac really, if you don't have one of the internet restore enabled Macs then if you zero the drive properly it's going to remove the recovery partition so booting with CMD+R won't really be an option.
If you've backed up with Time Machine and then restore, it'll also potentially reinstall corrupt files from the backup, so it's probably better to clone your drive to a disk image, then restore from that. At least you'll know there are no bad blocks on the drive after a full zero format. Apple have a utility to make a USB key installer for Lion here : http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1433 it'll be useful to have one around if you need to reinstall Lion first before restoring from a backup, especially after zeroing your drive! Sounds like the best thing you can do is progress through the following list, going to the next item if the problem's not resolved : Reinstall iWork Delete Pages from the Applications folder Move the iWork 09 folder out of the Macintosh HD > Library > Application Support Folder Open the App Store and re-download Pages, or reinstall from the iWork DVD Reinstall OS X Boot holding CMD+R and select a fresh install of OS X Lion (if you're on Lion) on your hard drive Boot from your Snow Leopard installer DVD (if you're on SL) and select to install OS X on your hard drive Run the 10.6.8 combo updater http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1399 or 10.7.1 update http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1437 Backup & Zero the drive Prepare Boot from the install media that came with your Mac by holding ALT and choosing it from the startup manager, be it DVD or USB key. If you have Lion use CMD+R Select to install OS X on an external USB drive that has around 20GB of free space for the OS (just to be safe). The additional free space on the drive should be equal to the amount of data you've used up on the internal drive, with a couple of GB to spare hopefully. Boot from the external drive by holding ALT (after the OS X install it should be the default startup drive anyway) Backup Use SuperDuper http://www.shirtpocket.com to make a full clone to a disk image on your external drive. Choose Macintosh HD as the source and Disk Image as the destination, save the disk image on the external drive in Sparse image format (read only takes far longer as it needs to convert the image after making it) If SuperDuper is unable to clone the disk then you definitely have bad blocks and will need to seek the help of a data recovery technician Once finished, double click the disk image and check it mounts on the desktop with the generic white disk icon, check your files are there and check the overall size of the disk image is similar to the data used on your hard drive. There will be a few GB discrepancy as there are system specific files which don't need to be imaged Zero Open Disk Utility and select the internal hard drive (not the volume name Macintosh HD but the disk above it), go to the Erase tab, click Security Options, on 10.6 tick Zero format, on 10.7 drag the slider one notch to the right (Lion dumbing things down again) Zero the drive, it'll take a few hours. Restore Boot from the Lion USB installer mentioned earlier and reinstall a fresh copy of Lion, this will recreate the recovery partition Once finished, reboot from your external USB drive created in step 3.1 User SuperDuper again, choosing the mounted disk image as the source and the freshly installed OS X drive as the destination, in settings select "restart from Macintosh HD" to do when finished, then you can go to bed and let it finish Once zeroed and restored, you should then be confident there are no bad blocks on the drive. If you still get the problem then have Apple replace the hard drive, boot from your lovely new external utility drive and use SuperDuper to clone the disk image back to your new hard drive. Reinstalling Lion from the USB key will restore the recovery partition to the zeroed drive, then you can use SuperDuper from your external drive to clone your original hard drive over the blank installation of Lion. Any problems just call me! Regards Sam MacAmbulance Providing affordable Apple & PC services Sam Mullen 07747 778022 http://www.macambulance.co.uk [email protected] -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Sussex Mac User Group" group. To post to this group, send an email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/smug?hl=en-GB.
