How to erase & reinstall

[indefatigable]

Hey all—

I've decided to sell my powerbook running 10.4 to my aunt for a nominal amount. While I trust her, there's not a ton of life left in the PB, and I'd still like to securely delete everything off of it.

So, despite the time, I'm going to do a 7-pass erase, and reinstall the OS for her. However, while I've done a lot of things on a mac, I've never actually reformatted and reinstalled.

It sounds like I boot off the install disk, select erase and then erase and reformat as Mac OS (journaled), correct?

After this, what happens? Do I reboot the computer off of the install disk again and reinstall the OS?

And on a related note, I gave my mom my old G4 tower years ago. It's running 10.2 (I think) and it is dying. Is there any way to securely delete this drive for her and for me? Would I need third-party software, or did 10.2 come with a zero-out option? I can't recall, does anyone else? I do still have all the original install disks for this computer.

We have no use for this old g4 tower once my mom's stuff is off of it, so there's no need for the drive to be working after deletion.

Thanks a ton!

 

[indefatigable]

Sorry for bumping this, but I have an additional inquiry...

The Powerbook I am wanting to erase tends to get hot. For some reason the fan runs all the time even if the PB has been off for awhile.

Anyway, I once had to scan my whole harddrive for viruses as a requirement for a grant project, I had to stop and start a number of times because I felt the PB was getting too hot, from running too long.

Is there a way to "pause"an erase of the hard drive if this takes too long? I'm thinking of upping the ram before giving it to my aunt (it only has 512 right now, and she's planning on it anyway). I'm also planning on starting with a zero-out and seeing how that goes.

Thoughts? Ideas?

Thanks!