I wanna completely reformat my phone because it's starting to get slow for some reason. So how can I go about doing this? I also have the latest update on the phone

See http://wiki.maemo.org/Updating_the_tablet_firmware - for a full reset you'll need to reflash both the eMMC and the firmware. Don't forget to backup anything from the MyDocs folder (the eMMC image is missing a lot of the originally installed data).

You can select ROM to reflash first. eMMC is not necessary

It is if you want to reset to factory default.

First flash eMMC then flash OS. This is the only way to do factory setting fresh out of the box experience, another option is to put the phone on the floor and hammering it until it smashed. This way everything will be all erased and reset lol.

Just so I understand.
flashing your n900 as per http://wiki.maemo.org/Updating_the_tablet_firmware does not clear personal data on the phone, is that correct?

If I was selling it and want my n900 to have an out the box experience for the new owner, I have to flash the eMMC (which i presume is the internal memory used for personal data)

As suggested above one should flash eMMC first before flashing the firmware.

So how do you flash the eMMC?

Instructions are here:

http://wiki.maemo.org/Updating_the_f...MC_in_the_N900

Make sure not to restart your device after flashing the eMMC image (don't use the command with the '-R' option at the end which restarts after flashing), you need to reflash with the firmware update immediately afterwards.

Someone in the know please answer because the wiki is painfully (and stupidly) contradictory. Which is the CORRECT order to flash. No guessing, what is the actual answer! (I mean flash completely back to factory default settings)

EMMC then ROOTFS

or

ROOTFS then EMMC

Because the wiki has little information points that tell you the correct way is to do it both ways. Seriously. WTF?


From the info box:
A little further down the page from that it explains how you have to flash the EMMC in a way that would appear as though it will be the first step, just below that it has this little gem:

Okay, minus a million points right there. Is this some kind of guessing game? Pick the right order or brick your device and start over.

If you want to explain how to reflash the device, please do it properly, chronologically, step by step, even if you think those steps are redundant and don't need to be explained, explain anyway!

Sigh.

I am not sure you need to do all this.

I wiped my phone (factory reset) from the settings menu - click settings and in that menu you click the top status bar to bring up the options. If it wasn't there then it was settings, phone and click the top status bar. Sorry I cant remember exactly and I have sold my N900 so I cant try for you. When I put a new SIM into the N900 it was exactly like you want - an out of the box experience.

Thanks Bob, I was aware of that option, but I'm not sure how 'factory default' it gets things.

On the settings screen, clicking the top menu brings up "Restore Original Settings" - but it pretty much goes on to say "User content will be unaffected"

I'm struggling with a full root partition - I've essentially created a completely non-standard spiders web in my file system to gain a few megabytes here and there, so it'd be nice to start over but this time with the understanding that things in 'testing' may not be optified and I should pay closer attention to before and afters.

I think technically you're right, I don't need to do it, but I'd like to have the option.

Thanks again.