Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Need to erase hard disks

poiihy

poiihy

macrumors 68020
Original poster
Aug 22, 2014
2,303
64
I have a Beige G3 with 96MB RAM (one stick failed) and it is stuck out of Mac OS X. The only thing I can boot into is the Jaguar install disk, but the Disk Utility in that does not have a secure erase option. I tried booting into the Panther disk but it gets stuck with display off after the startup screen.

Is there some software that I can burn to disk that I can boot from to secure erase the hard drives? Also, is there some diagnostics tool like this too?
 
use a firewire cable and connect to a different mac, and use disk utility to erase the hard disk in target disk mode

hold down the T key on the old g3 and it will boot into target disk mode

if i am ignorant and g3 didn't have target disk mode, i apologize, and recommend you remove the hard disk and use some kind of enclosure and a pc to wipe it..

i don't know of any self booting CDS for macs that wipe hard drives, besides the install media
 
rigormortis said:
use a firewire cable and connect to a different mac, and use disk utility to erase the hard disk in target disk mode

hold down the T key on the old g3 and it will boot into target disk mode

if i am ignorant and g3 didn't have target disk mode, i apologize, and recommend you remove the hard disk and use some kind of enclosure and a pc to wipe it..

i don't know of any self booting CDS for macs that wipe hard drives.
Click to expand...

Beige G3 does not have firewire nor target disk mode. It does not have USB either.
http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/powermac_g3/specs/powermac_g3_233_dt.html

As for an enclosure, I cannot find any SCSI enclosures out there. I guess SCSI is just so damn old :confused:
There are still IDE enclosures out there
But I don't want to buy anything
 
Last edited:
Last edited:
This beige G3 is an Oldworld-ROM Mac. DBAN PPC said it only works on Newworld-ROM Macs.
 
Didn't realize that...

Your best bet might be to stick a SCSI card in a newer Mac and use secure erase on that. Look for an Adaptec branded card with an internal 50 pin connector. You should be able to get one for $5-10 on Ebay. Pick up a 50 pin ribbon cable also, which should run you about the same.
 
556fmjoe said:
I would boot a NetBSD CD and run something like "dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/wd0"


This will fill the drive with zeroes, assuming "/dev/wd0" is the internal drive.
Click to expand...

/dev/wd0 would be the ATA drive next to the motherboard?
 
The Zero All Data option came with Jaguar 10.2.3. You could try to find a retail disk with that. Otherwise, boot with your Jaguar disk and type man diskutil using the Terminal utility to see if the secureErase option is there. You might be able to erase your disks via the Terminal instead of the Disk Utility GUI.
 
rigormortis said:
do you intend to repair this computer ? or resell it? or throw it out???

maybe consider finding a company that will accept your hard drive for free, providing you pay for shipping and shred the disk

something like
http://www.shredstationva.com/document-shredding-alexandria-electronic-media
Click to expand...

Shred the disk?!?! No no no I want to sell the hard drives, they are worth more than the machine itself.

----------
weckart said:
The Zero All Data option came with Jaguar 10.2.3. You could try to find a retail disk with that. Otherwise, boot with your Jaguar disk and type man diskutil using the Terminal utility to see if the secureErase option is there. You might be able to erase your disks via the Terminal instead of the Disk Utility GUI.
Click to expand...

How do I open Termainal? It is greyed out!
 
poiihy said:
Shred the disk?!?! No no no I want to sell the hard drives, they are worth more than the machine itself.

----------



How do I open Termainal? It is greyed out!
Click to expand...


i guess your just going to have to fix the faulty ram, then
$27 for 768 mb of ram

owc sells ram hella cheap


my last idea would be to burn a copy of ubuntu or penguin ( i did a quick google search ) for power pc and see if that will erase it. ubuntu used to come out with "live" cds just like they do for intel



what else can you do? buy a scsi controller for a pc? do you need a terminating resistor?

eBay says a scsi controller sells for around 59-299 now

a couple years ago i tried to sell my 29160UW and it got 0 bids


if the hard disk is IDE and not SCSI, well then just go by a new hard disk for $10.99
http://preview.tinyurl.com/lcjpk5x

if the hard disk is scsi then your looking at $29 mininum

usb to pata ( for a pc or mac ) would be $9


do they sell g4 cpus that drop in the g3 socket
 
Last edited:
poiihy said:
How do I open Termainal? It is greyed out!
Click to expand...

It seems you are right. Terminal.app is missing from the Installer Disk as is disktutil from the sbin directory on the disk, so booting in Single User mode does not help either. My Jaguar installer disk is a retail one with version 10.2.3 and does have Zero All Data in the Options within Disk Utility.app. You do have to select the whole disk in the Erase tab to make the Option tab available.
 
I have a Mac OS 9 install disk for iBook. Could this work? Would it allow access to startup disk chooser and disk first aid or whatever it's called? Most of all, would it allow installation on this machine?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back