Formatting a G5 and leaving it empty

[satans_banjo]

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.

 

[btbrossard]

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.

 

[MacHamster68]

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

 

[Giuly]

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

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.

 

[raysfan81]

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

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

 

[RedReplicant]

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

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.

dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sda bs=1M

Tinfoil hat.

 

[87vert]

just remove the hdd and give it away like that. New hard drives are so cheap anyways.