Need to prepare MacBook for sale, optical drive isn't working

[Sauer Grapes]

We upgraded to the new unibody macbook and want to sell our old core duo, 2.0 GHz running Tiger.

I want to clear all of our personal data, but the superdrive is hit or miss as far as when it wants to work, and today it's completely miss.

I don't care about saving any of the applications we've added, as I wasn't going to include them anyway, but is there a way to clear our info off of the hard drive without needing the optical drive for recovery?

Can I do it without deleting and reinstalling the operating system? If not, can I use an external hard drive to boot from?

Do I have any options without paying to get a new superdrive?

I have a buyer that has a new superdrive, but I'd rather not install it before the sale since I don't trust someone messing around the inside of my macbook that isn't authorized, and I sure as heck don't want to trust him to do the reinstall and erase all of my data.

Thanks for any input you guys may have.

 

[brand]

You could always use an external USB optical drive to reinstall the OS.

 

[KingYaba]

I don't care about saving any of the applications we've added, as I wasn't going to include them anyway, but is there a way to clear our info off of the hard drive without needing the optical drive for recovery?

Put everything you don't want this guy to have in the trash. Empty the trash (not secure empty). Delete your preferences and application cache in your user library. You could download a 3rd party utility like AppCleaner which will search for files that get scattered in your system. Then I'd run Disk Utility and erase the free space by writing zeroes.

The better option would be to buy an external optical drive and wipe the entire internal clean + zeroing.

 

[Sauer Grapes]

Will an external optical drive be recognized by the macbook after the hard drive is wiped clean for the reinstal?