possible to cease a 35 pass deletion procedure of HD?

[bmacir]

Here is my problem:
I sold my macbook pro (pre-unibody 2.4ghz - 160gb hd) to someone and I scheduled an appointment for tomorrow (Saturday) morning for the handover. Yesterday night I initiated a fresh install with a secure 35 pass deletion of my HD. The ETA is for tomorrow at 1.00 PM, my appointment is at 8.00 AM and at 9.00 AM I have a plane to catch.
So here are my questions: is there a safe way to interrupt the 35 pass erase (it's currently on it's 11th pass)? is it normal that it takes such a long time (48 hours)?

I obviously can postpone my appointment but, if possible, I would rather not.
Thanks in advance.

 

[alphaod]

Unless you're selling your computer to the NSA, you don't even need the 7-pass, so the 35 is overkill. Seriously, just stop it now and reinstall the OS.

 

[Tumbleweed666]

Here is my problem:
I sold my macbook pro (pre-unibody 2.4ghz - 160gb hd) to someone and I scheduled an appointment for tomorrow (Saturday) morning for the handover. Yesterday night I initiated a fresh install with a secure 35 pass deletion of my HD. The ETA is for tomorrow at 1.00 PM, my appointment is at 8.00 AM and at 9.00 AM I have a plane to catch.
So here are my questions: is there a safe way to interrupt the 35 pass erase (it's currently on it's 11th pass)? is it normal that it takes such a long time (48 hours)?

I obviously can postpone my appointment but, if possible, I would rather not.
Thanks in advance.

Its very normal to take so long, FWIW its also completely unnecessary to erase more than once these days, these multi erase passes are a hang over from previous disk technology. Even being paranoid, one pass with zeroes and one set of random is enough for anyone and your 11 will be fine already (maybe 13 or 14 by the time you read this?.

As its just writing a pattern, its hard to see why even just pulling the power would cause a problem (is there not a 'cancel' button, I've only doen this on PC?) , certainly on PC when I've done erases I've stopped mid way several times with no subsequent issues at all.

 

[bmacir]

Unless you're selling your computer to the NSA, you don't even need the 7-pass, so the 35 is overkill. Seriously, just stop it now and reinstall the OS.

Thanks for your quick reply, but how do I stop it?

Its very normal to take so long, FWIW its also completely unnecessary to erase more than once these days, these multi erase passes are a hang over from previous disk technology. Even being paranoid, one pass with zeroes and one set of random is enough for anyone and your 11 will be fine already (maybe 13 or 14 by the time you read this?.

As its just writing a pattern, its hard to see why even just pulling the power would cause a problem (is there not a 'cancel' button, I've only doen this on PC?) , certainly on PC when I've done erases I've stopped mid way several times with no subsequent issues at all.

thanks to you too, so your advice would be to hold down the power button and never look back?

 

[Tumbleweed666]

so your advice would be to hold down the power button and never look back?

I've done that on a PC several times without issue (I had one recently i did soem multi pass ereases on,a nd for various reasons stopped and started).

If you just press the power key once on a mac book, does it give you an option to power down / cancel? That might be slightly less aggressive but as I say I've powered down when using a program on PC that just wrote zeroes / randomly and didnt have a cancel option, as long as its in the middle and not at the very start of a cycle where it might be writing to a crucial disk block its hard to see why it would cause a problem.

But you dont get your money back if I'm wrong

 

[bmacir]

I've done that on a PC several times without issue (I had one recently i did soem multi pass ereases on,a nd for various reasons stopped and started).

If you just press the power key once on a mac book, does it give you an option to power down / cancel? That might be slightly less aggressive but as I say I've powered down when using a program on PC that just wrote zeroes / randomly and didnt have a cancel option, as long as its in the middle and not at the very start of a cycle where it might be writing to a crucial disk block its hard to see why it would cause a problem.

But you dont get your money back if I'm wrong

Ok, I'll try it out when I get home later, if something goes wrong I won't want my money back, but I will most certanly bug you again.

 

[bmacir]

It can be done

Ok, so I did it, if anyone out there is still wondering if it can be done, well yes you can interrupt a 35 pass HD deletion with absolutely no issue at all.

Many thanks Tumbleweed and alphaod!