Secure Erase Question- Selling my mac later today please respond asap

[BaronvdB]

Hey guys, i'm meeting the guy to trade my imac at 11am EST and I just started the secure erase process. I chose the 7 pass option and it says pass 1 of 7 5 hours remaing--here's the question:

Does it mean 5 hours remaining for the 1st pass or 5 hours remaining before all 7 passes are complete? If it takes 5 hours per pass I don't have time--what do I do then? Can I stop in the middle and chose to zero out data?

If it does mean 5 hours for all 7 passes doesn't that seem kinda fast?

Thanks for the fast responses--i would love to go to bed while it's erasing (almost 2am now)

 

[jmann]

I think 7 pass was overkill. A regular simple erase would've sufficed.

 

[BaronvdB]

I think 7 pass was overkill. A regular simple erase would've sufficed.

Yeah...too bad a read that in a few other posts saying that after I already started the 7 pass process...do you know the answer to the main question? Does is mean 5 hours for all 7 passes?

 

[jmann]

I googled and found this.

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=8548125

 

[Ntombi]

It depends on the size of your hard drive.

I just did a 7-pass erase on my iBook's 120 GB hdd, and it took about 5 hours total.

 

[BaronvdB]

I googled and found this.

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=8548125

holy crap...3 days!?!? that's retarded...that can't be normal

 

[BaronvdB]

It depends on the size of your hard drive.

I just did a 7-pass erase on my iBook's 120 GB hdd, and it took about 5 hours total.

It's a 2.4ghz machine with a 320gb HD

 

[jmann]

holy crap...3 days!?!? that's retarded...that can't be normal

Let's hope in your case it's not.

 

[BaronvdB]

Alright...i just hit skip and went back and I'm doing a zero out erase instead of the 7 pass....hopefully this dude I'm trading with isn't some type of data recovery expert or something

 

[kryptonianjorel]

holy crap...3 days!?!? that's retarded...that can't be normal

It is normal. Took me 7 hours to do 3 low-level formats on an old 20GB hard drive

One pass is enough, under every circumstance, 1 pass is enough. Unless you're being tracked by the FBI for kiddie porn, or have the blueprints to the military's newest fighter plane, 1 pas is plenty.

It costs lots and lots of money to bring back data that has been overwritten (they have to use a magnetic machine that determines the strength of the residual magnetic polarity of the bits)

I pray that whoever needs to secure erase finds this forum so it can be put to rest once and for all