Disk Utility Nightmare.

[SOLLERBOY]

Hi, I'm in the process of erasing my old imac so it can have it's HDD replaced by apple under the recall. Normally I would insert the original disk, boot from it and erase the HDD. Now it won't boot from the DVD. It just spits it out or displays it with a white circle crossed out over it. This is the original disk.

I am now trying a generic retail SL disk but it's been stuck on the apple logo for about 10 minutes.

ML internet recovery doesn't let me use disk utility either.
Can anyone offer any suggestions?

Thanks.

 

[AT06]

Copy hard drive with SuperDuper to external usb hard drive. Restart and hold the option key and select to boot off the external drive. Then you can go into disk utility once booted off the external drive and wipe (I suggest secure erase) your internal drive.

 

[Bear]

Hi, I'm in the process of erasing my old imac so it can have it's HDD replaced by apple under the recall
...
ML internet recovery doesn't let me use disk utility either.
Can anyone offer any suggestions?

Thanks.

Presuming your Mac is still bootable from the internal drive, you could always delete all your personal files and then use Disk Utility to erase the free space.

Make sure you get everything you can from under /Users as well as removing from /Applications any applications that didn't come with the system.

Also go into the Keychain and delete all your password entries from it.

 

[SOLLERBOY]

Thanks for the help guys. I tried a few things and eventually created a bootable Mountain Lion image and used DU through that.