I Just sold my iMac and it's going to the new owner on Sunday! I need to know how to wipe the HD! I have an OS X and an OS 9 CD... what should I do and in what order?
It depends on what you want to do. Unless you have secrets of national importance it is probably not necessary to work too hard at this.
Easy Way
Boot the OS X installer. Select the option to wipe the drive clean before installing OS X. Following that install OS 9 if you care to.
A little Harder
Boot the OS 9 disk. Find Drive Setup and launch it. I can't recall exactly but in one of the menus you will get an option for the kind of initializing to perform. Select the low level format. Then select the hard drive and initialize it. This will take some time. Following this you can install OS X or 9 or both.
I do think that changing ownership is one of those cases where 'low level format' (I think the option is actually, 'write all zeros') is in order.
CAUTION: this takes, on my 20 gig ibook 600 HD, about 2 (TWO hours). -> this is formatting alone.
You can find the option, as said, in drive setup on the OS 9 CD (write all zeros is under the third or fourth menu item where it says something like 'formatting options'.
For what it's worth: I am not part of any thing secretive, but when I look at the ease at which norton unerase can erase stuff, I'd never give away my 'book without a complete zero-ing wipe.
So the software restore is not the CD I should be using? I reformatted once, but it didn't say 'Write all zeros'... Guess I'll start looking for that OS 9 CD... <img src="graemlins/hmmm.gif" border="0" alt="[Hmmm]" />
<strong>So the software restore is not the CD I should be using? I reformatted once, but it didn't say 'Write all zeros'... Guess I'll start looking for that OS 9 CD... <img src="graemlins/hmmm.gif" border="0" alt="[Hmmm]" /> </strong><hr></blockquote>
As far as I know, you can (only?) find this on OS 9.x install cds, but it might be any cd which boots up a system 9 (and as such has 'drive setup' in the utilities folder). (also, I seem to remember that you have to press initialize first, but that might be wrong).
Comments
Easy Way
Boot the OS X installer. Select the option to wipe the drive clean before installing OS X. Following that install OS 9 if you care to.
A little Harder
Boot the OS 9 disk. Find Drive Setup and launch it. I can't recall exactly but in one of the menus you will get an option for the kind of initializing to perform. Select the low level format. Then select the hard drive and initialize it. This will take some time. Following this you can install OS X or 9 or both.
CAUTION: this takes, on my 20 gig ibook 600 HD, about 2 (TWO hours). -> this is formatting alone.
You can find the option, as said, in drive setup on the OS 9 CD (write all zeros is under the third or fourth menu item where it says something like 'formatting options'.
For what it's worth: I am not part of any thing secretive, but when I look at the ease at which norton unerase can erase stuff, I'd never give away my 'book without a complete zero-ing wipe.
<strong>So the software restore is not the CD I should be using? I reformatted once, but it didn't say 'Write all zeros'... Guess I'll start looking for that OS 9 CD... <img src="graemlins/hmmm.gif" border="0" alt="[Hmmm]" /> </strong><hr></blockquote>
As far as I know, you can (only?) find this on OS 9.x install cds, but it might be any cd which boots up a system 9 (and as such has 'drive setup' in the utilities folder). (also, I seem to remember that you have to press initialize first, but that might be wrong).