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satans_banjo

macrumors regular
Original poster
Sep 12, 2005
218
0
SE London
I have an old G5 I'm giving away and I don't have the install disc for it. I was wondering if there was a way of formatting the hard drive and not reinstalling OS X straight away, but if someone inserts the disc when booting it up they can reinstall it.
 
I have an old G5 I'm giving away and I don't have the install disc for it. I was wondering if there was a way of formatting the hard drive and not reinstalling OS X straight away, but if someone inserts the disc when booting it up they can reinstall it.
I would imagine this would work?

Mount the G5's HDD using Firewire target disk mode on a different mac. Then use disk utility on the other mac to format the mounted G5's HDD.
 
it even would work with a usb enclosure , for pure formatting there is no need for a firewire enclosure , erase/ format the hdd in apple extended journaled and then put it back in the g5 and its ready for the new owner to install the operating system he likes
 
Insert the Install-DVD, power it on while holding the "C"-key on the keyboard, select your language, choose Utils->Disk Utility from the top-menu, select your hard drive and click "Delete".

Don't have access to any Install-DVD? Burn yourself an Ubuntu-LiveCD or something, then do
Code:
sudo cat /dev/null > /dev/sda
in the Terminal.

This overwrites the whole disk with zeros. Do it a couple of times and your data cannot be restored again.
 
Insert the Install-DVD, power it on while holding the "C"-key on the keyboard, select your language, choose Utils->Disk Utility from the top-menu, select your hard drive and click "Delete".

Don't have access to any Install-DVD? Burn yourself an Ubuntu-LiveCD or something, then do
Code:
sudo cat /dev/null > /dev/sda
in the Terminal.

This overwrites the whole disk with zeros. Do it a couple of times and your data cannot be restored again.

Thats the easiest idea it doesn't require anything but a blank CD-R :D
 
Insert the Install-DVD, power it on while holding the "C"-key on the keyboard, select your language, choose Utils->Disk Utility from the top-menu, select your hard drive and click "Delete".

Don't have access to any Install-DVD? Burn yourself an Ubuntu-LiveCD or something, then do
Code:
sudo cat /dev/null > /dev/sda
in the Terminal.

This overwrites the whole disk with zeros. Do it a couple of times and your data cannot be restored again.

Code:
dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sda bs=1M
:D Tinfoil hat.
 
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