zero all data

macflymacfly
Posted:
in Genius Bar edited January 2014
in os9 with disk utility if you wanted to totally clean your hard drive before reinstalling there was an option for zeroing all data. i dont seem to be able to do this for osx. is there a way that i am missing?

thanks

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 5
    stimulistimuli Posts: 564member
    It's unneccessary, unless you want to remove all trace of your child-necro-bestiality-snuff pr0n from prying Federal agent eyes.



    It doesn't do anything useful.
  • Reply 2 of 5
    aquaticaquatic Posts: 5,602member
    I'd imagine you'd gain more space (however trivial.) Plus I'm anal like that. So, how can you do it in the uberOS that is OS X?
  • Reply 3 of 5
    ghost_user_nameghost_user_name Posts: 22,667member
    it was my understanding that a drive obtains 'grown defects' over time, and that by zeroing all the data on the drive, it's the best way to start from scratch with a healthy disk. Either way, I haven't to do it in X yet... sorry
  • Reply 4 of 5
    macflymacfly Posts: 256member
    that was my thinking. i thought i had some problem on the drive so figured it would be better to get that "clean, fresh feeling" that moms and daughters used to talk about in those wacky commercials....

    anyway, i also was wondering how my ti550 manages to remember things like what icon i used for my login and so forth after a new installation if its not lying around somewhere on my hard drive, invisible to me. would it be better to boot up with os9, then zero and shut down? can u do this? then i could reboot with x and start over. who knows..
  • Reply 5 of 5
    ghost_user_nameghost_user_name Posts: 22,667member
    You could boot off of a Mac OS 9 CD, run Drive Setup and zero all data on the drive. Then reboot, eject the OS 9 disk and insert the Mac OS X CD, and run a normal OS X install.
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