Disk Utility stuck whilst wiping hard drive?

[Simonmiller]

Hey everyone,

I'm getting ready to sell my old Powerbook G4 so booted up from the installation CD, and ran Disk Utility to do a 8 Way Random Write pass on the Mac hard drive before I did a clean install (the disc is Mac OS X 10.3.7).

I selected the top option in the drive panel of Disk Utility (the one saying 92.2GB Hitatchi blablabla) rather than the indented disk beneath it.

All went fine doing the overwrite, however it seems to have become stuck on "Creating Partition Map" - it's been like that for half a day now. Any thoughts? Should I have chosen the indented drive underneath the main description?

All help appreciated!

 

[DoFoT9]

the method that you did worked fine. its not going to wreck it.

the fact that its pausing might meant that the hard drive is potentially dying and cant be finished

 

[Simonmiller]

Thanks for the reply - it actually worked ok I think. I just quit Disk Utility, restarted it, and I was able to format the drive. I'm just doing a wipe with zeros to make sure it's securely wiped, and then I'll install the OS - I tried doing that after restarting my machine, and it was ok.

Also checked the drive in Disk Utility and no problems.

Thanks for getting back to me though!

 

[DoFoT9]

Thanks for the reply - it actually worked ok I think. I just quit Disk Utility, restarted it, and I was able to format the drive. I'm just doing a wipe with zeros to make sure it's securely wiped, and then I'll install the OS - I tried doing that after restarting my machine, and it was ok.

Also checked the drive in Disk Utility and no problems.

Thanks for getting back to me though!

must have just been some random glitch then! lucky

an 8-pass pass? why on earth would you do that! a zero-out is fine for everyday use.

 

[Simonmiller]

Heh, yeah I'm selling it, and had loads of work / financial stuff on it so just wanted to be careful I guess. Only took a day and a half (!)

 

[DoFoT9]

Heh, yeah I'm selling it, and had loads of work / financial stuff on it so just wanted to be careful I guess. Only took a day and a half (!)

ahh righto that justifies it a little bit more then! im glad it worked out ok

will you be upgrading to a new laptop?

 

[Simonmiller]

Nah, I've got a iMac desktop, and the 17" Powerbook was just getting to big to carry around when I was out and about, so I'm selling it to get money for an iPad. I think it does everything I would want it to do when I'm mobile.

 

[DoFoT9]

Nah, I've got a iMac desktop, and the 17" Powerbook was just getting to big to carry around when I was out and about, so I'm selling it to get money for an iPad. I think it does everything I would want it to do when I'm mobile.

im looking at doing that also, but i wont sell my 15" CD MBP. its too precious to me

ill probably grab the 16GB WiFi iPad - my nokia e63 can create a wireless network to share its connection to the iPad when im not near networks.